Power $$$$$$$$$

fpso

How much money per month does it cost to run a physical home lab?

GDaines

How long is a piece of string?

There are so many factors to consider that make that an impossible question to answer. How many devices do you intend to buy for your lab? And how many of those devices need to be switched on at the same time? And how often will you lab? Your lab does not need to run 24/7, only when you're using it, and then only the kit you're actually using at that time needs to be turned on, so for the most part it shouldn't affect your electricity bill too much.

And then what will you use for clients - virtual interfaces, routers, physical PCs, virtual PCs (and will they run on a PC or a server). Again you can't even begin to guesstimate how much they'll cost to run. If you use many physical devices you'll probably use more electricity than if you use virtual machines running on a single PC or server. PCs will potentially use more electricity than routers and less than a server, but that's a guess, you'd have to buy devices that measure power consumption to get a true idea of which devices are more power hungry than others.