Comment Re:As a taxpayer... (Score 2, Interesting) 622
Well it depends on what kind of equipment it was, and what the load is without SETI running.
Say it was a Pentium 4 that would normally be less than 10% CPU usage. The CPU would then consume about 5 watts without SETI, or about 60 watts with SETI.
Now consider the extra cooling cost created by increased electricty for the fans in the computer, and for the A/C to cool the room to be negligable, but at least 5 watts. We then have 60 watts extra consumed. This is really 60 watt hours.
60 * 24 * 7 * 52 is 524160 watt hours a year, or about 525 killowatt hours a year.
Now say the government pays 8.0 cents a killowatt hour. This puts the goverment of Ohio about $4.20 in the hole a year for running SETI on its server.
As you can see, Ohio's government is full of America's top thinkers!
Say it was a Pentium 4 that would normally be less than 10% CPU usage. The CPU would then consume about 5 watts without SETI, or about 60 watts with SETI.
Now consider the extra cooling cost created by increased electricty for the fans in the computer, and for the A/C to cool the room to be negligable, but at least 5 watts. We then have 60 watts extra consumed. This is really 60 watt hours.
60 * 24 * 7 * 52 is 524160 watt hours a year, or about 525 killowatt hours a year.
Now say the government pays 8.0 cents a killowatt hour. This puts the goverment of Ohio about $4.20 in the hole a year for running SETI on its server.
As you can see, Ohio's government is full of America's top thinkers!
