Is there some sort of device that I can use to measure how much energy my computer system is using?

Question

I have a masive computer system setup in my room that is running a liquid cooling system, 6 drives, 3 x 27" monitors, and an array of other power hungry peripherials. These are all powered through three UPS battery backups. Anyway, my roommate is pointing to me for all the power usage in the electric bill to my usage. Now, i am aware that I am using a lot of power but I wondered if there was some sort of device that I can plug into the wall between my system and the powergrid to get actual metrics of my personal Killowatt hours used over a period of time. I am sure something like this exists but just not sure where to start looking. I would like to keep the cost of the device down because if I have to pay $1000 for the device, I might as well pay the extra $300 a month in electric.

Really just want some emperical data so i can pay my fair share of the bills.

Answer 1

Most UPS's have a serial port in the form of a RJ-11 port. You can actually plug that into your computer, download and run a utility called Powerchute to monitor your power usage. Also every computer has a diagnostic computer that you can access by a command protocol called IPMI, you can download and install utilities such as ipmitool to query the diagnostic computer. You can also take meter readings at the meter that the utility company uses and compare a day when you have your computers on with a day that you do not have them on (keep in mind that the UPS's will still be drawing power). Note that if your apartment has electric heat and it's winter then you're not really using anymore than you would've heating the place anyways. Note that at $0.10 per kwh (power prices range from $0.07 per kwh to $0.25 per kwh), $300 per month would be the same as running 10 high performance servers 24 hours a day. If you must, you can usually buy a power meter at Radio Shack.

Answer 2

for a system that big, it would be difficult to tell it's over all usage, since it fluctuates during usage. The best indicator is utility bill history. You can contact the utility company and they will give you monthly usage figures for at least the past 2 years. Your usage varies during the year, if you live in a hot climate chances are good your summer bill is much higher than your winter bill etc.



There are things you can do to reduce your usage. If it isn't a server, you can program it to go into sleep mode when not in use, you can also turn off the monitors when not in use, this will also help reduce the heat generated and reduce the amount of energy used to cool the area. You can decrease the graphics on the monitor, it may be surprising, but your monitor uses more energy when viewing photographs than text, the more colors the more energy it uses.

Answer 3

The device is called kill-a-watt and costs about 20 or 30 bucks.



It will tell you how many watts you are drawing right now. It will also count the total number of kilowatt-hours that you use, which is what your electric bill is based on.



Convert watts to kilowatts and multiply the number of kilowatts times the number of hours you draw that many watts, and you get the kilowatt-hours used. That way, you can figure out how much electricity you would save if you used your computer for 30 hours less a month (one hour a day).



But if you want to measure it exactly (including the flucuations in usage), the total usage mode of the device is exactly what you need. It's like a mini version of your electric meter.

Answer 4

Those devices are sold all over the place - supermarkets, DIY stores etc. Prices over here range from below 10 € upwards. They may be called 'energy cost meter' or 'power cost meter'.



If you need to get an accurate low power reading from your computer equipment (unlikely in your case ;-) ), make sure to get on that can handle the phase factor from your power supplies. In your case, however, rather make sure it can handle the total power (if you have all three UPSs in one outlet) - or get one for each of the UPSs.

Answer 5

It looks like the kill-a-watt will do everything you want. You can plug it in and let it run for 24 hours and see how much electricity you use per day. I just ordered one from NewEgg for $24.95 shipped.. I didn't know that they made such a thing.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

yes there is such a device, it's called a kill a Watt.



http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=kill+a+Watt&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=1948042253235866601&sa=X&ei=fN-FTrzjNMa2tgeA9-g_&ved=0CHUQ8wIwAQ