Anyone ever worked out the Electricity Cost alone of Bitcoin Mining???

[loor64]

Hi All,

Last night I was looking at the Bitcoin global (estimate) hash rate and thought to myself, I might just work out how much electricity is used to mine those 3600 Bitcoins per day.  And here is what I came up with:

Fixed Electricity Cost:                  0.09c /kWh
Global Hash rate:                        1,228,570 Th/s

Now for the energy consumption of the miners I used a SP50 from Spondoolies Tech and a Antminer S7 from Bitmain. 

SP50: 16,570 Watts per 110 Th/s +/- 10%..  Since I have owned a SP20E and could never get to 1.7Th/s I used the lower hash rate for the unit of 105 Th/s. Which works out to be 160 Watts per Th/s.

Antminer S7 = 1293 Watts for 4.73 Th/s.  Which works out to 274 Watts per Th/s.

I picked these two ASIC's because they seem to be the most energy efficient on the market currently.

So as an average 160Watts+274Watts / 2 = 217 Watts per Th/s.

So now we come to the power per hour used by the Bitcoin network. 

1,228,570 Th/s * 217 Watts = 266,599,690 Watts or 266,599.69 per kWh.

266,599.69 KW/h * 0.09 cents = $23,993.9721 USD per hour JUST IN ELECTRICITY, NOT INCLUDING RENTING A WAREHOUSE, STAFF ETC

6 Blocks an hour in ideal conditions but since last difficulty change was a 5% increase then I used (6blocks*25 BTC) + 5% = 157.50 BTC * $407.50 = $64,181.25.

Take the Electricity costs off the total income of the Bitcoin Mining Network and you get a figure of $40,187.2779 per hour in revenue less electricity.

Mind you this is using the most energy efficient miners on the market, which we all know that not everyone is using this sort of equipment. 

So breaking it down even further we get:

24 hours * 40,187.2779 = $964,494.6696 / day

And as income in BTC/Th/day we get $964,494.6696 / 1,228,570 Th/s

Which gives us 0.785055 cents / Th / day OR

0.00192652 BTC/Th/Day.

So everyday the network is wasting just under $24,000 per hour just in Electricity cost.  Or even more staggering, $575,855.00 per day.  Over half a million dollars a day on electricity. 

Mods: If this thread is in the wrong section kindly move it.

Anyways, I find that staggering those costs, without taking into account having a datacenter/warehouse/staff/Internet/Equipment etc etc.

Thoughts?

Cheers

[defined]

Convert that into CO₂-emissions and other environmental damage, and dollar for dollar you end up the same as mining for gold.

[xhomerx10]

If every person on earth wasted 1 hour of their life on a triviality just one time,  it would amount to 7.125 billion wasted hours.  That amounts to 813,356 wasted years or about 4 times the amount of time man has inhabited the earth.  I can't fathom the amount of energy used but I'll bet it rivals the calorie consumption of the bitcoin network!  What the heck, I'm gonna waste the hour fathoming:

 The average human body at rest requires 5440 kilojoules per day.  So for that wasted hour, 226.67 kilojoules are expended by each and every human on earth.
Now 7.125 billion humans times 226.67 kilojoules = 1615000000000 kilojoules
Forgive me for not showing the math (perhaps you can waste part of your hour on that tonight) but it works out to:

    448,611,111 kWh !!!  (OMG can you say global warming?)

 Wow.  I can't even imagine the ensuing destruction if humans did that every single day.

 Let's assume $0.09 per kWh and that gives us $40,374,999.99 which is nonsensical and utterly meaningless.  Damn, I am so glad you and I could be a part of that waste today.   Same time tomorrow?


 Oh my gosh!  I haven't even considered the CO2 output!  Don't get me started... maybe another day.  I'm going to conserve the planet for the rest of my night and do something productive like mine bitcoin,  generate a few more vanity addresses or help my child figure out a way to raise money to help save the brown bat from white-nose syndrome.

[philipma1957]

Hi All,

Last night I was looking at the Bitcoin global (estimate) hash rate and thought to myself, I might just work out how much electricity is used to mine those 3600 Bitcoins per day.  And here is what I came up with:

Fixed Electricity Cost:                  0.09c /kWh
Global Hash rate:                        1,228,570 Th/s

Now for the energy consumption of the miners I used a SP50 from Spondoolies Tech and a Antminer S7 from Bitmain.  

SP50: 16,570 Watts per 110 Th/s +/- 10%..  Since I have owned a SP20E and could never get to 1.7Th/s I used the lower hash rate for the unit of 105 Th/s. Which works out to be 160 Watts per Th/s.

Antminer S7 = 1293 Watts for 4.73 Th/s.  Which works out to 274 Watts per Th/s.

I picked these two ASIC's because they seem to be the most energy efficient on the market currently.

So as an average 160Watts+274Watts / 2 = 217 Watts per Th/s.

So now we come to the power per hour used by the Bitcoin network.  

1,228,570 Th/s * 217 Watts = 266,599,690 Watts or 266,599.69 per kWh.

266,599.69 KW/h * 0.09 cents = $23,993.9721 USD per hour JUST IN ELECTRICITY, NOT INCLUDING RENTING A WAREHOUSE, STAFF ETC

6 Blocks an hour in ideal conditions but since last difficulty change was a 5% increase then I used (6blocks*25 BTC) + 5% = 157.50 BTC * $407.50 = $64,181.25.

Take the Electricity costs off the total income of the Bitcoin Mining Network and you get a figure of $40,187.2779 per hour in revenue less electricity.

Mind you this is using the most energy efficient miners on the market, which we all know that not everyone is using this sort of equipment.  

So breaking it down even further we get:

24 hours * 40,187.2779 = $964,494.6696 / day

And as income in BTC/Th/day we get $964,494.6696 / 1,228,570 Th/s

Which gives us 0.785055 cents / Th / day OR

0.00192652 BTC/Th/Day.

So everyday the network is wasting just under $24,000 per hour just in Electricity cost.  Or even more staggering, $575,855.00 per day.  Over half a million dollars a day on electricity.  

Mods: If this thread is in the wrong section kindly move it.

Anyways, I find that staggering those costs, without taking into account having a datacenter/warehouse/staff/Internet/Equipment etc etc.

Thoughts?

Cheers

Your numbers are wrong.

The network is .4 watts per gh not .21 so you 1/2 the power used

Or the networks is .3 watts per gh not .21 so you 2/3 the power used

Next price is 4 to 6 cents not 9 cents. So you are wrong in the other direction by 2 to 1 or 3 to 2

Basically your errors do not quite cancel out .  My guess is you are off by 10000. And the hourly profit over power is 30000 not 40000

[BigBoom3599]

This is why we have things such as Gridcoin or others, to not waste all that electricity

[loor64]

Hi All,

Last night I was looking at the Bitcoin global (estimate) hash rate and thought to myself, I might just work out how much electricity is used to mine those 3600 Bitcoins per day.  And here is what I came up with:

Fixed Electricity Cost:                  0.09c /kWh
Global Hash rate:                        1,228,570 Th/s

Now for the energy consumption of the miners I used a SP50 from Spondoolies Tech and a Antminer S7 from Bitmain.  

SP50: 16,570 Watts per 110 Th/s +/- 10%..  Since I have owned a SP20E and could never get to 1.7Th/s I used the lower hash rate for the unit of 105 Th/s. Which works out to be 160 Watts per Th/s.

Antminer S7 = 1293 Watts for 4.73 Th/s.  Which works out to 274 Watts per Th/s.

I picked these two ASIC's because they seem to be the most energy efficient on the market currently.

So as an average 160Watts+274Watts / 2 = 217 Watts per Th/s.

So now we come to the power per hour used by the Bitcoin network.  

1,228,570 Th/s * 217 Watts = 266,599,690 Watts or 266,599.69 per kWh.

266,599.69 KW/h * 0.09 cents = $23,993.9721 USD per hour JUST IN ELECTRICITY, NOT INCLUDING RENTING A WAREHOUSE, STAFF ETC

6 Blocks an hour in ideal conditions but since last difficulty change was a 5% increase then I used (6blocks*25 BTC) + 5% = 157.50 BTC * $407.50 = $64,181.25.

Take the Electricity costs off the total income of the Bitcoin Mining Network and you get a figure of $40,187.2779 per hour in revenue less electricity.

Mind you this is using the most energy efficient miners on the market, which we all know that not everyone is using this sort of equipment.  

So breaking it down even further we get:

24 hours * 40,187.2779 = $964,494.6696 / day

And as income in BTC/Th/day we get $964,494.6696 / 1,228,570 Th/s

Which gives us 0.785055 cents / Th / day OR

0.00192652 BTC/Th/Day.

So everyday the network is wasting just under $24,000 per hour just in Electricity cost.  Or even more staggering, $575,855.00 per day.  Over half a million dollars a day on electricity.  

Mods: If this thread is in the wrong section kindly move it.

Anyways, I find that staggering those costs, without taking into account having a datacenter/warehouse/staff/Internet/Equipment etc etc.

Thoughts?

Cheers

Your numbers are wrong.

The network is .4 watts per gh not .21 so you 1/2 the power used

Or the networks is .3 watts per gh not .21 so you 2/3 the power used

Next price is 4 to 6 cents not 9 cents. So you are wrong in the other direction by 2 to 1 or 3 to 2

Basically your errors do not quite cancel out .  My guess is you are off by 10000. And the hourly profit over power is 30000 not 40000

Thanks for your reply.  If it is 0.4 watts per Gh then that works out to 400 Watts per Th/s.  Or if you use 0.3 watts per Gh it's 300 Watts per Th/s. 

400 Watts works out to 491,428,000 Watts or 491,428.00 kW/h or an increase of 84.33% over my 0.21 watts per Gh.

300 Watts is 368,571,000 or 368,571.000 kW/h, or an increase of 38.25% over my 0.21 watts per Gh.

As an average, since no one on the bitcoin network are all using energy efficient mining gear, Its a increase (using your figures) of 61.29% in power costs. or total kW/h of

Using 4c per kW/h and 6c per kW/h you get:

4cents = 429,998.64 kW/h or a cost of $17,199.95 per kW/h.

6cents = 429,998.64 kW/h or a cost of $25,799.92 per kW/h.

Compared to my figures at 9cents per kW/h which was $23,993.9721 USD per hour.

Even if people were getting power at 6cents per hour, it's still $2,000 more expensive per hour using your figures. (Except if the entire bitcoin network got their power for 4 cents per kW/h.

Just food for thought...

As for being the same cost as mining Gold.  I checked and it is sometimes more expensive to mine Gold, except for Nevada where it's $282.00 per Ounce to mine.

The difference being is that what do you have after mining a Bitcoin.  All you are left with is a digital currency that has no assets behind it, it's not backed by banks, its just a digital currency.  You dont actually own anything of value except for the electronic bitcoins sitting in your wallet.

Anyways, its an interesting topic. 

Cheers

[NorrisK]

You also assumed that all of the network hash is coming from the most efficient miners out there. It is very likely that still around half of the hash is the result of older less efficient miners. Big farms don't replace all their older miners by brand new ones in one go, they slowly replace them one by one so they lose the least amount of hashrate.

The use of less efficient miners will again cancel out some of the effects of the adjustments in power consumption.

I do agree that it is an insane amount of power that is being wasted on mining, but as was already said, the same goes for mining other precious stuff such as gold.

[kano]

Just imagine how much power a single large bank uses each day around the world powering all it's buildings, ATMs, employee benefits that use power ... etc.

Yeah Bitcoin is like one tiny fraction of that power usage ... Bitcoin only ~$0.5mil a day in electricity? Wow that's small for the whole world.

... as for mining at a loss ... well it's been like that for years

[GermanGiant]

The problem is not how the power is used. The problem is how the power is generated. One tenth of the desert Sahara gets enough sun light to feed the whole world's energy requirement. That is absolutely green power.

[xhomerx10]

The problem is not how the power is used. The problem is how the power is generated. One tenth of the desert Sahara gets enough sun light to feed the whole world's energy requirement. That is absolutely green power.

 It would be interesting to study the effect of such a proposal.  Note that solar cells convert, on average, 1/6 of the energy they absorb into electricity with the remaining energy emitted as heat.  Compare that with the albedo of the desert which reflects 2/5 to 3/5 of the sunlight back into space converting the rest to heat.  If you cover the desert with solar panels, there would ne a net increase in solar absorption.  Would this cause increased global warming or would this be offset by the reduced CO2 emissions from the reduction in use of hydrocarbons for fuel?  Also, could we achieve a more favourable result using nuclear fission which has a much smaller footprint per MW than solar panels?  I wonder who would fund such a study?

   

[defined]

One tenth of the desert Sahara gets enough sun light to feed the whole world's energy requirement.

You need less than one tenth of the Sahara. This picture shows it:


It looks small, but down on the ground it needs endless arrays in a very hostile environment, in a very remote location.

[GermanGiant]

The problem is not how the power is used. The problem is how the power is generated. One tenth of the desert Sahara gets enough sun light to feed the whole world's energy requirement. That is absolutely green power.

 It would be interesting to study the effect of such a proposal.  Note that solar cells convert, on average, 1/6 of the energy they absorb into electricity with the remaining energy emitted as heat.  Compare that with the albedo of the desert which reflects 2/5 to 3/5 of the sunlight back into space converting the rest to heat.  If you cover the desert with solar panels, there would ne a net increase in solar absorption.  Would this cause increased global warming or would this be offset by the reduced CO2 emissions from the reduction in use of hydrocarbons for fuel?  Also, could we achieve a more favourable result using nuclear fission which has a much smaller footprint per MW than solar panels?  I wonder who would fund such a study?

  

That's an awesome analysis.

One tenth of the desert Sahara gets enough sun light to feed the whole world's energy requirement.

You need less than one tenth of the Sahara. This picture shows it:


It looks small, but down on the ground it needs endless arrays in a very hostile environment, in a very remote location.

I saw a different picture. But, is there a hostile environment in Sahara for solar panels ?

[defined]

is there a hostile environment in Sahara for solar panels ?

It is hostile for solar panels and for humans. High temperatures reduce the efficiency, sand storms will cover billions of square meters of solar panels in dust, no water, no infrastructure, no nothing. If it would be a nice environment people would live there.

[filipwx]

i didin't pay eletricity here, now i'm mining ETH with a 2 AMD 7970 Sharppire, some friends are sending his rings for me connect here, you hare tu find a place like here to put your machines.

[kryptopojken]

Im pretty sure Ive seen the number 1.5M a day?

[Amph]

i didin't pay eletricity here, now i'm mining ETH with a 2 AMD 7970 Sharppire, some friends are sending his rings for me connect here, you hare tu find a place like here to put your machines.

ehm unless he live in that place, it would be risky for him to send miner to a stranger, personally i would not do it, no matter how cheap is the electricity

at best i could rent if it is profitable, to do so, butu usually the host guy charge the same profit he can make from mining, so it's pointless

[belgium]

I am mining here in Belgium now for a couple of months...A friend is mining in France and Germany..Every country has his own electricity costs per hour KilowAtt.

[avw1982]

I am mining here in Belgium now for a couple of months...A friend is mining in France and Germany..Every country has his own electricity costs per hour KilowAtt.

How about the price for 1 unit of electric current charge at there bro. I think cloudmining best I guess to work instead of small scale work in mining.

[philipma1957]

The problem is not how the power is used. The problem is how the power is generated. One tenth of the desert Sahara gets enough sun light to feed the whole world's energy requirement. That is absolutely green power.

How do I move the power from the Sahara to the rest of the world?

Answer is you don't as it would be far too costly.  The grid  cost would be really high to set it up and really high to maintain it.





But it certainly could help people in Africa with their power needs.

[defined]

[How do I move the power from the Sahara to the rest of the world?

Answer is you don't as it would be far too costly.  The grid  cost would be really high to set it up and really high to maintain it.





But it certainly could help people in Africa with their power needs.

Africa is big. Bringing power from the Sahara thousands of km away is very expensive and has tremendous losses in efficiency. It it would be cheap and easy, someone would have done it already.