This is the first copy of our team scores from 2005. Nearly all of the systems were my personal systems or systems that friends let me maintain (and borg).
This snapshot shows 31 contributors on Dec 9, of which 20 were my systems. Passing a dozen people a week was common. And then when Klutz joined in earnest, the folks at DU howled in protest.
FWIW, SazanEyes produces more points every two days with his folding farm than the entire team did in over a year. How times have changed!
My electric bill has gone up about $60-100 per month since I started folding. It’s hard to get exact numbers because I also added a couple computers. I always left my PCs on 24/7 anyway, so this is just the extra cost of running them at 100% load. My bill will go up this summer (rate increases from 7.77 to 8.92 cents/kWh), whereas my computers helped heat my condo in the winter (seriously).
My primary folding box, with four 9800GX2 graphics cards and a quad-core AMD proc, pulls about 1000W from the wall at 100% load. This accounts for most of my extra electrical cost - using the formula above, about $56 to $64/month depending on the electric rate. The average computer doesn’t use anywhere near that much power.
From an environmental/conservation standpoint, I think it’s more valuable to have my computers doing something useful rather than sitting idle (wasting electricity) while waiting for me to access them. Distributed computing is also a good way to raise the profile of various research projects among computer users. Plus, man-caused global warming and “peak oil” are hoaxes, so I’ll use as much electricity as I want. ;-)
BTW, I’m currently participating in an annual folding contest with another team, but I’ll be back on team 36120 in a few days.