I was reminded last night that volunteer computing projects are a thing, and so I ran some rough numbers out of curiosity, and it turns out power doesn't cost all that much here? The average cost last year was 8 cents per kWh. If I ran my beefy work computer's CPU at full load that's like 25 bucks a month.
So that got me thinking, I could set up a dedicated machine for running, folding@home or something, and just set a fixed monthly budget for it.
