How we bill electricity: the meter, the 1.80 factor and the generator
Space rental and electricity are billed separately. Here is where every number on the invoice comes from.
In most price lists “power included” means its cost is already baked into the rent with a margin. We took a different route: rack space has a fixed price and electricity is billed on actual use.
Three components
- The meter. Every client has separate metering: how many kWh their equipment consumed in the month.
- The 1.80 factor. For every kilowatt a server draws, the infrastructure adds another 0.80 kW: cooling, heating in winter, losses in the UPS and the backup power installation. So the metered kWh are multiplied by 1.80.
- The price. The result is multiplied by the actual electricity cost from the supplier invoice. No markup.
When the generator runs
During outages the site runs on the diesel generator. Energy consumed in that time is billed at the actual generator electricity cost with the same 1.80 factor. There is no cap on hours: the generator runs as long as the outage lasts.
Example
A server averaging 150 W uses about 110 kWh a month. With the 1.80 factor that is 197 kWh, which appear on the invoice at the actual price. The calculator on the pricing page shows this estimate straight away.
