Bitcoin Forum

Mining vs cost of electricity of the total system will become unprofitable for me in 4 difficulty changes for one of my rigs, and in 6-7 difficulty changes for the other.  This is assuming $1.25 per 1 BTC also.  Harsh, guess I won't be buying that new video card after all   :(

This thread is just a heads up to everyone to keep track of your power consumption vs BTC generation.   Always stay on the profit end of that equation!  Sometimes shutting off the minings the right thing to do, sadly...

This is not always true even if mining profit is negative.
If someone pays $0.8 in energy to generate 1 BTC then he should have shut down his miners some weeks ago. But if he didn't, he can sell those bitcoins for $1.2 now :)
(just an example)

You need to ask yourself if you have the stomach for speculation.

Time to install a windmill :)

While I enjoy some healthy speculation, I have my own reservations about midrange forecasts of BTC, which is the length of time I will anticipate being involved  :)  By all means though, those with long term goals will (probably) profit.

I'm just saying that even the current spike of BTC price needs to continue aggressively in order to keep up with electricity costs from the equally aggressive difficulty increases.  If it doesn't....  well....

If it doesn't, people will start dropping off and I suspect difficulty may drop [or at least quit rising so quickly].

Well, then less people will mine, meaning the difficulty will go down again =P

Has the difficulty ever gone down?

Once.

Also, it will probably get more costly once summer time hits...A/C will be needed for my comps... =/

Yeah, I'm a little worried about that too, but then again, we'd be running the A/C anyway... Just might have to tolerate slightly higher household temps by trying to run the A/C the same way we would if we weren't running a 24/7 mining rig.  Although, since last summer, and recently, we've made some changes in the household that should help to reduce the overall temperature and power usage.  For example, we changed all our light bulbs from the old 60W ones to the new 13W ones, and we've gotten better at turning off appliances that aren't being used (TVs, extra computers, etc.).  I'm hoping things will balance out.

So what do you (OP) pay for electricity per KwH?

Also does anyone know of a web based calculator that will help me determine at what point mining is no longer profitable?

Twice.

if the number of people mining continues to increase, causing it harder to generate BTC, then no doubt the price of BTC will go up.
If the price does not go up in proportion to electric cost to generate using the most efficient hardware, then it is because there is a significant number of people running on "free" electricity.

I pay USD$.09 per kWh.  Which is apparently normal-to-high for the US.  But I factor in total power consumption of the dedicated rig (not just vid cards) and the cost of A/C so said PCs do not liquefy into a pool of thermite.  YMMV if you are in a more temperate area.

clarifying

once in may, 2010 and again in march 2011, post-mystery miner.

you need to look closely to notice it.

http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png

That it was. Looks like there were indeed two downdips. Although I would consider them more of a flatline... They didn't dip down very much that's for sure.

I only knew of one time, but you'd know better than me =P

That's pretty much what I pay too $0.09 Canadian dollars. As far as temps, it all depends. This year I have a feeling the summer is going to be short and cool(er) than last year. Cooling costs are nil as I'm gonna put the miners in the basement where normally it's cooler. I'll figure out some ventilation scheme somehow.

Man I hope I can make a bit of use out of a pair if 5870s I recently purchased before the difficulty makes it uneconomical to do so.

Where you located in the US? Southern part? Hot weather most of the year there?

In the situation you refer to, if it costs more in energy than the bitcoins are worth, it would be better for the person to shut off the miners and buy the bitcoins with cash.

Right but who here pays $0.80 per kilowatt-hour? I doubt anyone pays that much. I think for the majority of GPU miners the mining biz is still profitable.

Last summer I was in the top tier of electricity usage, which at the rates in central California means I was paying $0.40/kWh on the last couple kWh of electricity I used.  I've made a few changes to my house this year, but I'm sure I'll be hugging that line of top tier costs again, even without counting the 3 mining rigs I'm now running.

I've prepared my rigs based on an estimated cost of $0.40 USD per kWh, and only about 35% of the BTC generated (at $1.1/BTC) needs to be allocated towards electricity.  The rigs should pay themselves off within 4 months even assuming a worst case scenario of summer electricity rates.

Have you considered the additional air conditioning load during summer?

My rigs are actually producing very little radiant heat, and I already had the AC running 24/7 last summer, so it's not going to result in any extra hours of AC use.

Regarding heat, couldn't you route your exhaust outside via some creative duct assembly?

I've been toying with that idea lately.  What's annoying about AMD's dual GPU single slot cards (e.g. 5970, 6990) is that they exhaust hot air from both ends.  My mining rig isn't in a case, but if it was in a case, then half of the hot air would be blasted right back into the case instead of out of the back of the system.  Derp.

Assuming you keep your place at the same temperature with miners running as you do without them running, then you have to be running more power to your A/C when you have the miner running. You have to spend at least as many watts on air conditioning as you do on mining, plus a certian percentage on top of that because your A/C is not perfectly efficient.

Your thermostat might be at the same setting but the A/C compressor will stay on longer (and thus consume more power) when you've got 1KW of heat coming out of your rig than it does without the rig running.

if that same someone Had bought the bitcoins at 0.70$ ea, he would have made even more! so yes, profit wise it makes sense to not mine anymore. Instead, you can buy

You'll need a very efficient miner (probably 2x5970) to generate 1 BTC/kWh, so that's not really relevant. If you only have a single 5870 in a normal machine it will be less than half as efficient, and if you have a 4xxx ATI or Nvidia GPU it will use several times more power to generate 1 BTC.

cost of generating bitcoins goes up to the point that mining is no longer profitable, miners shut off their machines, fewer bitcoins for trade on Mt. Gox, scarcity makes value spike, miners turn machines back on. Its more or less self regulating. As long as your machine kicks out the same hash rate it should more or less generate the same revenue.

When the block reward drops to 25, and transaction fees begin to matter, these mining profit calculations are going to become much more difficult than they already are.

Unless absolutely everybody turns off their miner, the same amount of bitcoins will be mined every day. The difficulty level will just drop to adapt.