On Tue, 4 Oct 2011 13:43:15 -0700, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote: > So call it 12c/kWh on peak. At 400kW, that's $48/hr, which isn't > bad, operating expenses wise.
Well, yes and no. If they only turned it on once and a while it wouldn't be too bad, but I'm pretty sure it runs 100% of the time. At least I have never walked by when the racks were not lit up, so... $48 * 24 * 365 = $420480/year Versus the average lab at (waves hands) $150 in electricity a month = $1800/year? It will of course depend on what kind of work the lab does. The difference is two orders of magnitude. Anyway, last I looked we had around 300 professors, so that one facility used up, order of magnitude, as much juice as all the "normal" labs combined. (Certainly there are some other labs around which also use a lot of electricity.) Cooling water usage was probably also a sore point from the administration's perspective. Pretty much everything here runs AC off chilled water coming from a central plant. Either that cluster used up a whole lot of chilled water capacity at the central plant or they built a a separate chiller somewhere. Dave Kewley who sometimes posts here used to run that system, so he would know. Regards David Mathog mat...@caltech.edu Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
