7 ms·

Isn’t that entirely dependent on your electrical rate? There must be some break even point right?

phire 5y ago
That website was using a electrical rate of USD 12c per kWh, which is already on the low side. I think most electricity The break-even point is 8c per kWh. But there will be other overheads, so you probably need 6c per kWh to actually make a profit. Such prices most be possible to obtain in a few oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
  You can routinely get ~2 c kWh in Chicago: https://hourlypricing.comed.com/ https://hourlypricing.comed.com/
  - oliwarner 5y ago
    Bloody hell, not in the UK. £0.15/kWh is pretty standard. If you go wholesale there are microscopic portions where it dips as low as minus-£0.10/kWh but generally you're still looking at 10p a unit or more. Of course this is moot when you're not paying the bill, as this story says.
  - phire 5y ago
    That's not the total price. It doesn't include Transmission, distribution, taxes or whatever a "Capacity Charge" is.
    - marktangotango 5y ago
      I did the math in my area/provider and it came out to a .01 discount on the standard rate, which is not much of a discount at all. Even for the largest industrial, multi megawatt plans, which was surprising.
    - kasey_junk 5y ago
      On my last bill that added 4.2c per kWh. The bill previous was 3.9. The majority of those fees are fixed cost so don’t scale linearly with usage.
    - selectodude 5y ago
      Capacity charge is how they reduce the shitstorms that happen when the cost of electricity skyrockets and real time pricing becomes national news. They're basically forcing you to hedge your future electricity usage. If you shut off your bitcoin miners during the warmest parts of the day, your capacity charge will go down.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    That's amazing. When I lived in Chicago in the 1990s the rates were some of the highest in the country, ~$0.11 or so at that time. Hourly rates/smart meters were not yet available to consumers (commercial customers could get different plans, IIRC).
    - kasey_junk 5y ago
      My actual billed amount ranges between 10-12 c per kWh. The hourly rates are highly variable and my usage needs are pretty constant. But if you had a high variable load keeping your rate below 5 c per kWh doesn’t seem that hard in Chicago.
bluGill 5y ago
Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.
- adolph 5y ago
  It might be worthwhile for larger electricity customers to perform off-peak mining. Or even better, for someone to offer mining as a service to those customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
- arsome 5y ago
  Yeah, during the winter I mine on my video card because I'm basically just swapping some of my natural gas heat out for a few hundred watts of electric heat and my electricity is primarily provided by nuclear and hydro. Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can be. I'll definitely look more into heatpumps when it comes time to replace my furnace or air conditioner, but my understanding is they perform quite poorly in Canadian winters.
  - Empf 5y ago
    I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2
    - CarelessExpert 5y ago
      Because it also generates revenue via bitcoin. So it's "cheaper" insofar as the bitcoin is subsidizing the operation of the rig and, as a byproduct, heating the space.
    - arsome 5y ago
      My understanding is it's essentially just as efficient as a resistive electrical heater as all the energy used in your video card is converted to heat at some point in the process. There may be some very minor loss here, but I'm not enough of a physicist to say what it'd be.

That website was using a electrical rate of USD 12c per kWh, which is already on the low side. I think most electricity The break-even point is 8c per kWh. But there will be other overheads, so you probably need 6c per kWh to actually make a profit. Such prices most be possible to obtain in a few oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

kasey_junk 5y ago
You can routinely get ~2 c kWh in Chicago: https://hourlypricing.comed.com/ https://hourlypricing.comed.com/
- oliwarner 5y ago
  Bloody hell, not in the UK. £0.15/kWh is pretty standard. If you go wholesale there are microscopic portions where it dips as low as minus-£0.10/kWh but generally you're still looking at 10p a unit or more. Of course this is moot when you're not paying the bill, as this story says.
- phire 5y ago
  That's not the total price. It doesn't include Transmission, distribution, taxes or whatever a "Capacity Charge" is.
  - marktangotango 5y ago
    I did the math in my area/provider and it came out to a .01 discount on the standard rate, which is not much of a discount at all. Even for the largest industrial, multi megawatt plans, which was surprising.
  - kasey_junk 5y ago
    On my last bill that added 4.2c per kWh. The bill previous was 3.9. The majority of those fees are fixed cost so don’t scale linearly with usage.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    Capacity charge is how they reduce the shitstorms that happen when the cost of electricity skyrockets and real time pricing becomes national news. They're basically forcing you to hedge your future electricity usage. If you shut off your bitcoin miners during the warmest parts of the day, your capacity charge will go down.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  That's amazing. When I lived in Chicago in the 1990s the rates were some of the highest in the country, ~$0.11 or so at that time. Hourly rates/smart meters were not yet available to consumers (commercial customers could get different plans, IIRC).
  - kasey_junk 5y ago
    My actual billed amount ranges between 10-12 c per kWh. The hourly rates are highly variable and my usage needs are pretty constant. But if you had a high variable load keeping your rate below 5 c per kWh doesn’t seem that hard in Chicago.

bluGill 5y ago

Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

adolph 5y ago
It might be worthwhile for larger electricity customers to perform off-peak mining. Or even better, for someone to offer mining as a service to those customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
arsome 5y ago
Yeah, during the winter I mine on my video card because I'm basically just swapping some of my natural gas heat out for a few hundred watts of electric heat and my electricity is primarily provided by nuclear and hydro. Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can be. I'll definitely look more into heatpumps when it comes time to replace my furnace or air conditioner, but my understanding is they perform quite poorly in Canadian winters.
- Empf 5y ago
  I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2
  - CarelessExpert 5y ago
    Because it also generates revenue via bitcoin. So it's "cheaper" insofar as the bitcoin is subsidizing the operation of the rig and, as a byproduct, heating the space.
  - arsome 5y ago
    My understanding is it's essentially just as efficient as a resistive electrical heater as all the energy used in your video card is converted to heat at some point in the process. There may be some very minor loss here, but I'm not enough of a physicist to say what it'd be.