Ethan's Notes

What my home lab actually costs in electricity

I put a metering plug on the rack for a full month. Idle draw is 61 W; peak during nightly backups is about 140 W. At local rates that is roughly the price of two coffees a week, which is less than the cloud VM it replaced and a lot more fun to maintain.

The surprise was the switch: a managed 24-port unit pulled 19 W doing nothing. It has been replaced by an 8-port fanless one at 4 W.