There’s no need to feel bad for powering down, especially since the witness rewards are received as SP. It’s the only option.

And just to clarify - I get the costs of your project. I just didn’t understand why ~$1000 of post rewards were needed when witness rewards are 20+ times more than that...per month (at current prices). If you cashed some out tonight, you could potentially get about $5 per STEEM. Seems like a great deal to me!

Good luck with your new servers and upgrades! I have a feeling that most of us will be upgrading witness specs again soon with STEEM prices continuing upward.