Bitcoin Forum

I live in the san francisco bay area and consume ~3kWh per hour.

What is the best PG&E plan to use to minimize electricy cost? Tiered, time-of-use or EV plans?

Now, before anyone comes in here and says that mining in California is dumb and I should move to china (always seems to happen). I know it's expensive, and I don't care, so don't bother.

I'm not going to suggest moving to China.
 California electric rates though DO tend to be excessively high, if you plan to get serious about mining at some point you ARE going to need to move somewhere with lower rates - like Central Washington State.

 Best bet is to see if PG&E has a "time of day" rate modifier, pretty much any other way to get lower rates involves "interruptable" stuff you DO NOT WANT as a miner.

Agreed, however, I am a software engineer and the difference in salary I can make here more than justifies the excessive electricity cost. Worst comes to worst, the plan is to purchase a datacenter warehouse and register an LLC to get cheaper rates (maybe buy property in central washington to do so).

Do the time of day plans typically cost less than a tiered usage system (goes from 0.14 -> 0.22 -> 0.44 per kWh depending on use).

Damn PGE is actually worse than SoCal Edison lol. My tier rate was .12 | .22 | .34 so was at 0.34 every month. Commercial in LA is 0.10 so hopefully I'll finally see a savings next month. Still not done with the build out though but at least some of the machines are running.

How did you expand out to commercial? How many machines do you need to have running to make the switch worth it? My brother goes to school down in Orange and I was thinking of maybe renting an office space (found a couple for $2000-3000/yr in lease costs) plus then the LLC registration fee ($800) and yearly recurring business costs. Did you find co-investors for your move?

.1935 / KWH here in Los Angeles tier 3. And yep, I'm still profitable! :)

Time of Day is usually layered ON TOP of tier plans.

damn those numbers are really bad.

Here in NJ

13.5  for 8 months
16.7  for 4 months

and free heat helps  lower the winter rate of 13.5 to more like 10

Solar, and more solar maybe a turbine if possible.

Yep, they installed the smart meter so they charge not sure if it's tier 2 or 3 on peak hours, but it doesn't matter for me since i'm tier 3 all the way baby. lol.

well not anymore since i moved to the new location but still. they definitely get you.

I'm tier 3 all day everyday! lol

I paid 22 cents to 30 cents this winter for pge deep green.  I even hit tier 3 and it was 40 cents in california. lol
summer rates are cheaper around 15 cents to 20 cents

All i can say is that electricity cost is only   1/8 of the cost of mining the coin.  7/8 goes towards the coin.  Still profitable even at 40 cents but its an annoying headwind and I'm force to hold those coins longer.  

As you hold your coins longer than  1 year plus and let it appreciate 10x ,  electricity cost no longer becomes a factor.  

Selling too soon and not hodling will cost way more than the electric rates. So go mine and have fun.

I see that california does have Industrial rates at around 10 cents.  Looks like i would need to rent out a building in a industrial zone to get those rate and go large scale with the mining farm?


Or maybe I can buy a  residential farm and get a bunch of solar panels to pursue my hobby.

7 cents in Dallas ........  :P

My rate drops the more I use anything over 2000kw = 6.9 cents and everything before that as long as you hit that number is same price.

Downside is it is hot as balls here so you better have good ventilation or your stuff fries.

I moved out of Iowa because I thought 9 months a year averaging about 7.6 cents/KWH and 3 months a year averaging 14/something was bad - especially since the high rates were in the HOT part of the year.

If you want some perspective i live in Sweden and our rates change dramaticly in summer/winter. In summer i can get rates of 0.1-0.05 dollar per KwH, but now during winter it has sky rocketed to 0.3 dollar per KwH. I still make alot of profit tho, ive noticed that electricty does not matter THAT much if you're not a very large scale miner. If you're just hobby miner like me, it does not add up to that much if you compare it to profits.

I am from Indonesia. The electricity consumption for my RIG is about 1000 W, in Indonesia the rate I get is $ 0.04 .
I think this tariff is still quite cheap because it is subsidized by the government

E-TOU-B is the only way to go with PGE. Averages out to roughly $0.18/kWh, with 85% usuage billed at the 'off-peak' rate.

A better way to mine with California expensive electric rate is to actually choose low power consumption miners. The asic antminer z3 equihash, X3  miner, fpga graphics card. It's more equipment cost but makes more money and consumes least amount of electricity.

In the country from where i live, tiered time-based or what we call "on-peak" and "off-peak" hours are always more cost effective than flat rate electricity. You have to call your electricity provider and do your own math but it should boil down to spending less.

To further enhance savings what you could also do is develop a script to change overclock settings and power consumption of your miners to HIGH power during off-peak hours and LOW power during on-peak hours.

That's a trade off to get an easy life.  lol  California doesn't produce their own power like other states.    Someone explain it here.   That's why it's expensive.


As for PGE California.  Avoid Tied Rate E-1.   For me it would Calculate for $13k per year for my setup.   If you go with ETOU-B it cost $9.1k a year.

Reason for that it's fixed to .22 cents for Winter.  I think it's .27 cents 4-9pm.    

Tiered rate it's worse because you eventually go over 400 kwh in first few days and especially your the only miner.  They would on only charge .14 cents.  Once you get pass that it would increase to .22 cents until you hit 400% over baseline (overall area).   So it depends on your area.    If all your neighbors are miners it would be cheap.  lol  

Go with solar because it would put you in a yearly plan.   Before October and Nov.   Bitcoin wasn't profitable enough to pay  for the electricity.   I was able to cover most of the cost when  I was able to sell it $17k.   Timing is really important.

I'm surprised how gauged everyone is getting in the US. I'm paying 6.2 cents in Texas. My rate is about to go up to 8 cents next month, which I guess I can't complain about.