Huh. I've never had them fail before but I think Oneslowz28 or someone else did. I'm not sure how to get around that. This is all I could find that was relevant. You might just have to wait for the workaround or for the links to be fixed again. You can fold manually until you can get the tracker to work though.
As for power bills, I've not shut my computer off other than for updates that required a restart in about 2 months now. It's folding when I'm not gaming and has only cost about $30 so far.