Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, Hetzner is notorious for pushing down prices for everything as far down as they can by any means necessary. So this most likely makes their price point more sensitive than many other providers to any cost increase. Here is a great walk-through of one of their data centres [1] and you will see how streamlined everything is down to the hardware components. Nearly nothing goes to waste. [1]: https://yewtu.be…
Hetzner has a data center in Finland as well. While the electricity price in Finland is going up, it is not going up as much as in Germany due to availability of nuclear power. If you want to use Hetzner services I recommend picking a location in Finland.
Hetzner Price Adjustment
161–170 of 312 posts
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure that's included.
Nope, if you want to make a true comparison, then nuclear is in the costs of about 40 Cents/kWh instead of the postulated 2 Cents/kWh. Because as we do not have a final deposit for nuclear waste there are no costs for it. There are only models with suggested costs. But all of this is not priced into it. A German paper produced by the independent "Wissenschaftlicher Dienst des Bundestages": https://www.bundestag.de/re…
For example the total lifetime costs of Onkalo (Finlands spent nuclear fuel storage site) is estimated to be 3.5 billion.
Lets take the new OL3 reactor as a example. It produces at 1600MW which comes to around 14 million MWh in a year so 14 billion kWh per of electricity produced yearly (slightly less in reality with downtimes for refueling and maintenance). That would mean that if storing the spent fuel would actually cost 38c/kWh just OL3 would generate ~5.3 billion euros worth of fuel storage costs per year which is more then Onkalo lifetime total costs. And OL3 has a planned operational life of 60 years.
And Onkalo is supposed to store all of Finlands already produced spent nuclear fuel and the fuel produced in the next 100 years.
Even if you add dismantling costs of the plants at the end of their lifetime there is no way to get to such crazy numbers even if it costs 2 or 3 billion euros per reactor to rid of. Lets say with 60 year lifetime of OL3 you get around 840 billion kWh produced and decomissions costs 5 billion it would be ~0,6c/kWh of cost. Yes it costs but not tens of cents. For the older plants that produce less it would be around 1c/kWh.
In Finland they started to collect money into a fund for decomissioning and spent fuel storage in the 80s and it currently has a bit over 20 billion euros in assets (the fund invests the money on markets so it fluctuates obviously). So basically they try to do their best to estimate how much money they need to save and collect it during the lifetime. For now it looks like the amount has been roughly correct. And still the for profit companies keep investing into new nuclear plants with this cost already in the price so it doesn't seem to be too much.
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#163Its fascinating that electricity is really the biggest cost of computing. I put a server in my house which was supposed to save money, but actually the electricity cost was something I hadn't thought of and really adds up. esp when the AC has to run to remove the extra heat. So much old hardware out there but its going to get junked as new hw is more efficient.
There's a reason used servers are so cheap on ebay: if you run them 24/7 their electricity cost makes them unattractive compared to new hardware (often within a year).
If you need really cheap (and local!) compute for short periods of time, picking up one of those servers can still work out cheaper than renting from a cloud provider.
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#164Its fascinating that electricity is really the biggest cost of computing. I put a server in my house which was supposed to save money, but actually the electricity cost was something I hadn't thought of and really adds up. esp when the AC has to run to remove the extra heat. So much old hardware out there but its going to get junked as new hw is more efficient.
In Germany, my rule of thumb was that a constant 1W load is 1€/year. This year, I had to update it, it is now more something like 3€/year. The increase is so important I am still not sure if my calculations are right! 1W x 24h x 365 = 8760Wh My current price: 0.33€/kWh (100% renewable) 8.76kWh x 0.33€/kWh = 2.89€
Just for my curiosity though, Where did your 1Eur come from? The prices were >20ct for 10 years now. Or do you calculate without taxes and stuff?
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#165Why don’t they switch to an alternative cooling method like ground cooling?
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like with refrigerators - when some years ago it was both cost-efficient and even 'green' to scrap working refrigerators and replace them with new ones, because the difference in improved energy efficiency meant that the electricity cost savings outweighed the cost of the new refrigerator already within a year or two and the reduced pollution from less electricity (at the time, fossil fuels) outweighed the envir…
Not the first time I see someone saying this for refrigerators and I don't understand how it could be possible. From what I can find even in extreme case it's not true. Even with a fridge from 1972 which averaged 1726kw/h (Source: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.energy.27.... ) to a more recent one which will probably be around 400kwh. And with the kwh at 0.15$ ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A…
Once you account for manufacturing and disposal, running the older is probably almost always better.
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#167The result of shutting down nuclear plants. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#168Its fascinating that electricity is really the biggest cost of computing. I put a server in my house which was supposed to save money, but actually the electricity cost was something I hadn't thought of and really adds up. esp when the AC has to run to remove the extra heat. So much old hardware out there but its going to get junked as new hw is more efficient.
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hetzner has a data center in Finland as well. While the electricity price in Finland is going up, it is not going up as much as in Germany due to availability of nuclear power. If you want to use Hetzner services I recommend picking a location in Finland.
How is the peering to Finland nowadays? Last I heard it was all still going through their German centres.
Re: Hetzner Price Adjustment
#170The result of shutting down nuclear plants. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯