Dkrypt, I am horrified at 14 ¢ per kilowatt•hour. This last decade they have finally started selling compact fluorescent replacements for incandescent bulbs. The new fluorescents use the expensive electric ballasts with a steady, non-flickering light unlike the cheap magnetic ballasts used for tubes which flicker and give off a 60-cycle hum. These fluorescents use little more than a quarter of the power of an incandescent bulb.
I was going to mention these new fluorescent bulbs as well. I have converted almost all the light bulbs in my house to fluorescents just recently, so I think by doing that I've probably more than compensated for the added wattage of using the Grid. Note that I don't run my computer all the time, but still WCG uses 100% CPU, whereas before I was using a program called CPUidle that actually reduces the idle power of the CPU. The net effect according to one of the "Watts Up" meters is that WCG more than doubles the power usage of my computer, from ~ 60W (with CPUidle) or 120W (without CPUidle) to about 145W (running WCG @ 100%) Still, by changing from a 120W incandescent light fixture to a 21W fixture (three bulbs), I have made up for all of the increased wattage of WCG.
Lots of numbers to play with....
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Thread: Electricity cost of Grid?
