[Discuss] NAS: encryption

[smallm at SDF.ORG (Mike Small)]

On Thu, Jul 09, 2015 at 10:05:14PM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> >   It
> > pulls up to 250W so it will cost a little more to power so somewhere
> > around $4000 the first year and $1600/year to operate.
> 
> WOW!!!  Your electricity is EX..PEN...SIVE!  Assuming my math is right,
> 250W is 1kWh every 4 hours, that that means 6kWh/day * 365 days/year ==
> 2190 kWh/year.  To cost $1600 to operate you're paying $0.73/kWh!?! I...
> don't think so.  So either your math is wrong or mine is.  By my math at
> 15c/kWh (which is MUCH more that I pay here in Georgia over the course of
> the year), this would cost $328.50/year to operate.

$0.73/kWh does sound high, but in Massachusetts $0.15/kWh only
covers the supply charges (as opposed to distribution etc.).
However, people paying the $0.15/kWh default rate for their supply
charges should look at one of the competitive suppliers. Years ago
when I looked the alternatives here mostly served commercial and
industrial companies. Yet I enrolled this week with a new supplier
and had a couple reasonable choices.  I believe the regulation in
MA requires "utility consolidated billing" meaning that you'd still
only have to deal with one billing entity, so it should be relatively
painless to get a better rate on the supply portion of your bill.
I got a somewhat better rate even asking for renewable energy (or
so it was labeled at least).

Also MA has net metering and I think some loan or build incentives
if you can do solar, though there's some kind of cap coming into
play on the net metering. (There's a petition about that around
for those interested.)

What puzzles me is what people are doing at home to use up all that
disk space. But that's probably not a productive direction for
discussion.  Like in the "bloated firefox" thread, I guess different
people have different ways of using their computers.


Disclosure: unlike my last two "marketing" posts, this time I do
have a connection to at least one of the companies you could choose,
at least for a little bit longer. The place I work writes software
for these competitive supppliers and one of our customers is one
of your options. But the rates do really look lower, particularly
if you can commit to a long term contract.


-- 
Mike Small
smallm at sdf.org           SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org