Windows Home Server – A user’s Experience

What’s the annual cost to power a Windows Home Server?

After receiving a rather large electricity bill I decided it was time to help save the planet, I replaced most of my light bulbs for energy savers and applied for cavity wall insulation. In order to understand where all those little electrons were off to in such a hurry I also purchased an OWL, this nifty little device gives a readout of your home’s instantaneous power usage in Watts. You can carry it around the house and switch things on and off, and see the readout go up and down.

What did the OWL tell me? Well, when my home is in “standby” mode, i.e. overnight or when I’m away, it was using about 260W. The OWL also told me that of this 260W about 90W was due to my Windows Home Server. Not bad I thought, that’s less than a typical light bulb. The problem is of course that it’s using this power all day, everyday. Time for some maths (or “math” if my mate Jason is reading this):

The assumptions:

1. Electricity costs 10p per KWh.
2. WHS uses 90W.
3. WHS is always on.
4. Annual usage for a home is 3500KWh.
5. Annual bill for a home is £350 (3500KWh@10p/KWh).

Using the above assumptions, we get the following results for running a WHS for a year:

1. It uses 788KWh.
2. It costs £79 per year.
3. It’s responsible for 23% of the total electricity usage.

It’s quite a surprise to think that something that uses less power than a typical light bulb can be responsible for nearly a 1/4 of your electricity bill. Of course this case is specific to my WHS, which runs on an old Shuttle PC. A system built from scratch could be designed with low-power consumption in mind.

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