Europe out of the mining game?

[Noviz]

Lucky for me I have free electricity Although in a year I won't so I have to make the most of it...
inb4 "Your a lier"
inb4 "You don't actually have 'free' electricity"
blah blah blah

Tell us your secret then.

Lucky for me I have free electricity Although in a year I won't so I have to make the most of it...
inb4 "Your a lier"
inb4 "You don't actually have 'free' electricity"
blah blah blah

Tell us your secret then.

He's probably in some form of student shared housing. Quite commonly they'll have a fixed monthly rate. I had that back when I was in university. The free electricity is averaged out over a large number of rooms. Someone is paying but most likely it's future students who will have a higher rent.

This situation isn't scalable and time limited. When I was in school we had three student towers with 1440 rooms. Fixed $210/month rent (back in the 80s!). No metering of utilities.

Essentially this ^£70 a week with all bills included. I suppose if you were to be really pedantic then I don't actually get 'free' electricity as such as its included in that fee... however that gets paid with my student loan and £70 per week is tiny compared to what most students have to pay... my friend pays around £200 per week without any bills included...
Although I don't have a huge operation, only a few GH/s, so I don't know if there would be an investigation if I were to use a shitload of power lol. On top of this my department generally uses top of the range ATI cards so I let one mine when I'm working.
The joys of being a student Although as BkkCoins said it is time-limited... so I won't have this in a years time when I graduate. Although I never saw my mining as a long-term pursuit so that doesn't bother me.

[1714055466]

1714055466

[Striker]

Hi,

I googled around and many articles refer Latvia has a place with low-priced electricity 

In Latvia $0.2 kW*h, mining not profitable.

Regards.

[titbb]

Electricity itself aint the problem, but the goddamn taxes they put over it are!

47% of total costs here in .nl are taxes, rest is basic electricity!

[ElectricMucus]

Electricity itself aint the problem, but the goddamn taxes they put over it are!

47% of total costs here in .nl are taxes, rest is basic electricity!

And the power plant pays takes too, their employees do and their contracts and so on.
The figure actually closer to 90%

[V4Vendettas]

Smug solar miner checkin in 

[mrb]

This. Man i'm considering in splurging on a bigger A/C to compensate for the added heat in my "computer room", it is currently running for 16h a day so i can survive this heat, that's 21KW/h a day and my humble 4 card rig is using 21.6KW/h a day, thats 42.6KW/h to generate 0.5BTC on average. Thank God in Venezuela we pay $0.011 per KW/h

As someone who doesn't pay attention to detail (it's "kWh" not "KW/h" ), you are almost certainly in error.

- Either the extra zero is a typo and you are in fact paying $0.11 per kWh
- Or $0.011/kWh is the generation cost and excludes the delivery cost, or vice versa (to know your effective rate, take your total amount billed and divide by our total kWh consumed)

Consider also that $0.011/kWh would be at or below the production cost of almost any hydroelectric dam in the world, including the Guri dam in Venezuela, which supplies 73% of the electricity in your country.

[BkkCoins]

Talking about Venezuela...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Venezuela-raises-electricity-apf-2525496835.html?x=0&.v=1

People there will have a hard time mining if the govt actually penalizes users who aren't reducing use rather than adding more.

[NetTecture]

Consider also that $0.011/kWh would be at or below the production cost of almost any hydroelectric dam in the world, including the Guri dam in Venezuela, which supplies 73% of the electricity in your country.

Thanks for the education of NORWAY not being on this planet. They get most of their power from dams, and the power costs often are in the 3 cents / kwh range. 11 is terribly high for hydro.

[RandyFolds]

Consider also that $0.011/kWh would be at or below the production cost of almost any hydroelectric dam in the world, including the Guri dam in Venezuela, which supplies 73% of the electricity in your country.

Thanks for the education of NORWAY not being on this planet. They get most of their power from dams, and the power costs often are in the 3 cents / kwh range. 11 is terribly high for hydro.

Noway's 2009 average price per residential kWh in 2009 was almost $.15us. Their industrial power isn't even close to 3 cents/kWh.

[BkkCoins]

Consider also that $0.011/kWh would be at or below the production cost of almost any hydroelectric dam in the world, including the Guri dam in Venezuela, which supplies 73% of the electricity in your country.

Thanks for the education of NORWAY not being on this planet. They get most of their power from dams, and the power costs often are in the 3 cents / kwh range. 11 is terribly high for hydro.

Note that the post from Venezuela is saying 1.1 cents not 11 cents...
and if you look at the power costs reported by wikipedia 11 cents is still pretty low for most places in comparison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing

The lowest reported there is 3 cents in Ukraine. I'm guessing they use hydro too because without hydro power is typically higher. Nuclear power being amongst the highest cost.

[mrb]

Consider also that $0.011/kWh would be at or below the production cost of almost any hydroelectric dam in the world, including the Guri dam in Venezuela, which supplies 73% of the electricity in your country.

Thanks for the education of NORWAY not being on this planet. They get most of their power from dams, and the power costs often are in the 3 cents / kwh range. 11 is terribly high for hydro.

Note that the post from Venezuela is saying 1.1 cents not 11 cents...

Yep. NetTecture needs too to pay attention to details

and if you look at the power costs reported by wikipedia 11 cents is still pretty low for most places in comparison.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing
The lowest reported there is 3 cents in Ukraine. I'm guessing they use hydro too because without hydro power is typically higher. Nuclear power being amongst the highest cost.

Actually nuclear when done right is amongst the cheapest. Hydro is the cheapest. Nuclear second. Then coal/gas/wind/solar/etc.

As a matter of fact, France can generate most of its electricity so cheaply (because 80% is from nuclear power) that it has an economic incentive to resell it to its neighboring countries, which it does, making it one of the world's largest electricity exporter (some sources say the largest). Unfortunately these low costs are not passed to domestic users (they pay 0.12 EUR/kWH or 0.17 USD/kWh) I guess because of additional taxes... Compare to wholesale electricity prices in France which are 0.042 EUR/kWh or 0.059 USD/kWh: http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C_EDF_wholesale_electricity_price_set_200411a.html

[minero1]

As someone who doesn't pay attention to detail (it's "kWh" not "KW/h" ), you are almost certainly in error.

- Either the extra zero is a typo and you are in fact paying $0.11 per kWh
- Or $0.011/kWh is the generation cost and excludes the delivery cost, or vice versa (to know your effective rate, take your total amount billed and divide by our total kWh consumed)

Consider also that $0.011/kWh would be at or below the production cost of almost any hydroelectric dam in the world, including the Guri dam in Venezuela, which supplies 73% of the electricity in your country.

You got me in one thing, i don't know how to calculate power usage, i just tried to figure it out on my own, i thought that since it is the amount of kW consumed in an hour then it must be KW/h. is that wrong? please correct me if it is.

What i DO know for sure is how much i pay for the electricity and how much it is per kWh (right?), in the power bill it says 0.1Bs (Venezuelan VEF) per kWh. The exchange rate is fixed by the govt to 4.30VEF per USD but there is the black market rate at 8.60VEF. i think my mistake was using the black market rate because i think it is the REAL/MARKET rate so 0.1/8.6=0.011, but with the govt rate that will be 0.023

Nice homework there in the guri dam thing but i live in the west part of the country (the remaining 27%?) where we have gasoline thermoelectric generators and since we pay 0.115VEF each litre of gasoline (yes, that's right 0.05USD each gallon) the price of electricity is a bit on the high side, with a litre of gasoline you could generate up to 9.7kWh (http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density) i guess the rest are operating costs.

Talking about Venezuela...

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Venezuela-raises-electricity-apf-2525496835.html?x=0&.v=1

People there will have a hard time mining if the govt actually penalizes users who aren't reducing use rather than adding more.

I just read that article but you failed to read "Venezuela's biggest energy consumers -- industrial firms, large businesses and shopping malls -- must reduce consumption by 10 percent during a month-long period" that law is not going to be applied to residential consumers

let's keep the thread about electricity costs, mining profitability and our own experiences with both in the place we live not in politics and politicians. shall we?

[tynt]

Hi,

I googled around and many articles refer Latvia has a place with low-priced electricity 

In Latvia $0.2 kW*h, mining not profitable.

Regards.

If I'm corrent then Latvia imports more electricity than it exports. That certainly drives up the price.
Energy costs €.11/kWh in Estonia until 2013 when energy markets open completely, that mean 30% - 50% rise overnight.

[sven]

0.33$/kwh here in germany
quit mining weeks ago even though it was still profitable

[BkkCoins]

What i DO know for sure is how much i pay for the electricity and how much it is per kWh (right?), in the power bill it says 0.1Bs (Venezuelan VEF) per kWh. The exchange rate is fixed by the govt to 4.30VEF per USD but there is the black market rate at 8.60VEF. i think my mistake was using the black market rate because i think it is the REAL/MARKET rate so 0.1/8.6=0.011, but with the govt rate that will be 0.023

Sounds like a great place to setup mining. I certainly wasn't talking about politics. I have no interest in it and live in Thailand myself so have no gripe with VZ. What I don't understand is why that article says this,

"Jaua told a news conference that residential customers will be charged an additional fee totaling 75 percent of their monthly bill if they do not reduce their electricity use by at least 10 percent as compared to the same month in 2009. The surcharge applied to individuals increases to 100 percent or more if the monthly consumption exceeds previous usage by 10 percent."

but you say they it won't affect residential customers. Even if you paid double it's still damn cheap.

[mrb]

You got me in one thing, i don't know how to calculate power usage, i just tried to figure it out on my own, i thought that since it is the amount of kW consumed in an hour then it must be KW/h. is that wrong? please correct me if it is.

It is wrong. kWh is the number of kW multiplied by the length of time you consumed them for. Eg. if you draw 0.5kW for 2h, that will amount to 1kWh. You were consuming 0.5kW the first hour, 0.5kW the second hour, yet it was never "0.5kW/h", the total energy consumed was 1kWh.

What i DO know for sure is how much i pay for the electricity and how much it is per kWh (right?), in the power bill it says 0.1Bs (Venezuelan VEF) per kWh. The exchange rate is fixed by the govt to 4.30VEF per USD but there is the black market rate at 8.60VEF. i think my mistake was using the black market rate because i think it is the REAL/MARKET rate so 0.1/8.6=0.011, but with the govt rate that will be 0.023

At first your calculations look correct. But my friend's power bill, in the US, shows $0.10/kWh, yet he pays $0.17/kWh. This is because in another part of the bill, distribution charges are added ($0.06/kWh), and taxes ($0.01/kWh). My point is, reading all the fine print is hard. I don't know what your bill look like, so I am suggesting something simpler:
- how much did you pay for the last billing period (in VEF)?
- how much did you consume for the last billing period in kWh?
Surely your bill must show these 2 numbers, right? Divide the first number by the second one.

Nice homework there in the guri dam thing but i live in the west part of the country (the remaining 27%?) where we have gasoline thermoelectric generators and since we pay 0.115VEF each litre of gasoline (yes, that's right 0.05USD each gallon) the price of electricity is a bit on the high side, with a litre of gasoline you could generate up to 9.7kWh (http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density) i guess the rest are operating costs.

This is scarily low, and might explain your rate.

Kind of off-topic, but I am genuinely surprised and confused by this black market rate... I assume the local population favor the dollar over the bolívar, right? Why would they spend 8.6 VEF to get 1 USD on the black market, when they could just bring 4.3 VEF to a bank following the official rate?

Edit: Apparently dollars are rationed by CADIVI, so the population turns to the black market to obtain them. Makes sense...

[minero1]

mrb, if you look at my first post you can see that what you just explained to me is exactly what i came up with, the only wrong thing was the nomenclature of the unit.

taking a look at the last power bill there are other charges, but they are fixed or non dependant on the amount of power billed, in a 103.67VEF bill for 986kWh, 4VEF for "fuel adjustment" whatever that means, and 1.06VEF from the billing service itself. No taxes

[minero1]

OFF-TOPIC

This is scarily low

gasoline is way cheaper than water here, we have more gasoline than water though

"Jaua told a news conference that residential customers will be charged an additional fee..."
but you say they it won't affect residential customers. Even if you paid double it's still damn cheap.

he said that, he will not execute, election year, populism, politics, i don't want to talk about it.

about it being a good place to mine, i think it is. Maybe i should start offering those services i've seen around here were people rent their mining hardware, i could mine for someone in let's say latvia or germany and it could be profitable for both. haha

[mrb]

Ok.

So even after these fixed taxes, your effective rate is $0.024/kWh assuming the official VEF/USD exchange rate, or $0.012/kWh assuming the black market one. This is indeed heaven for a miner. You can thank your country's gigantic petroleum reserves for that I guess the only risks/unknowns of setting up a massive mining operation in Venezuela would be availability of GPUs and other computer hardware (I know nothing of it), and stability of hardware & electricity prices (I heard of a +20% inflation rate?)

[minero1]

coming close to 30% inflation, but i don't think it hurts mining at all when you buy hardware in USD/BTC. i buy mostly at amazon since its the only one accepting non-us credit cards.

i think i can keep mining down to $1/BTC before pulling the plug at current difficulty