Amount of energy consumed on the farm. How much electricity does a mining rig consume?
With the rise in the value of cryptocurrencies in 2017, there was also great interest in their mining. Many people believed that mining is a gold mine in which you can get fabulous profits by investing just once. Actually, this is not true. In addition to equipment costs, it is necessary to consider energy costs.
Producing digital money is a very energy-intensive business. Therefore, you should not be surprised by high electricity bills if you have a whole farm of video cards or an ASIC device installed. The question of energy costs is extremely relevant among beginners. This is exactly what we will talk about today. So, what expenses await you if you start mining cryptocurrency and what are the global energy issues associated with the production of digital assets?
What is mining difficulty?
The vast majority of countries have not yet decided on their position regarding cryptocurrencies. Someone has already declared their readiness to work with them, and someone is preparing to eliminate them from their territory, but in most cases there is no legislative regulation. Accordingly, there are no official statistics regarding electricity consumption.
Moreover, even in countries where there are already legal regulation mechanisms, energy companies cannot know exactly where the resource they provide is being used.
The only way to estimate costs is to consider the difficulty of mining cryptocurrencies. The flagship in this area was and remains Bitcoin - the oldest and most expensive coin at the moment. First, let's look at the complexity indicator itself. It is a number calculated by the protocol and attached to all blocks of the chain.
So, starting in 2018, the complexity has already exceeded 1,600,000,000,000. One hash is a number chosen at random, in the range of 1 and 2 to the power of 256 minus 1. The peculiarity of this concept is that it cannot be exceeded by the hashrate.
Relatively speaking, for complexity we can give a comparison such as darts, where it is the center. The smaller the red circle on the board, the more game shells are spent to achieve the goal.
To calculate the average hashrate required to search for a block within 10 minutes, a special formula is used - D x 232 / 600, where D is the difficulty of mining cryptocurrency. In particular, with today's indicator for Bitcoin, the value will be 1.14x10^19 hash/s.
How much electricity is required?
We repeat, all calculated values will be very approximate. Simply because the farm and ASIC equipment from different manufacturers will consume different amounts of energy.
Let's take a look at Bitmain products as an example. This is the world leader in the production of mining equipment for Bitcoin production. The company's headquarters is located in China. Today its share of the Bitcoin production equipment market is more than 70%.
So, one of the company's products is Antminer S9. It contains chips made using 19 nm technology. The average performance of the chip is 4 terahash/s. At the same time, the miner consumes 1372 W of electricity. The entire line of devices released before S9 is characterized by high power consumption.
If we divide 1.14 × 10 19 by 14 × 10 12, we can find out that today about 800,000 ASICs of this model are in operation, totaling 1,100 megawatts.
When analyzing electricity consumption for mining, it is impossible not to mention that the International Energy Agency does not use units of measurement such as MW or GW. They have another designation - MTNE, which stands for million tons of oil equivalent. One HNE is equal to 11.63 megawatt-hours. The International Energy Agency estimated the total electricity consumption on the planet in 2017 at 13,647 MTNE.
If we take MTNE as a unit of measurement, we find out that the Bitcoin network requires 9636 gigawatt-hours or 1100 megawatts, which is equivalent to 0.829 MTNE annually. This figure can only be taken as a minimum, but these are the approximate figures.
It is worth considering that not everyone can afford to buy the latest miners, which means that actual consumption is much higher. For example, the predecessor of the S9 model, Antminer S7, requires 1.5 times more electricity than its modern counterpart.
At the end of 2017, when there was a rapid increase in the value of Bitcoin, ASIC Antminer S7 remained profitable for operation, because the price of the cryptocurrency covered all the costs of its production. Now it brings in little profit, and in the future it will be abandoned, which is why energy consumption values will change.
What do these numbers mean? Is this a lot?
As you know, everything in our world is relative, so you can only find out whether mining consumes a lot of energy or a little by comparison. Let's look at a few examples that will help make the numbers more clear.
So, the energy consumption of Bitcoin is identical to the expenses of half a million residents of Canada, which is a developed country and has one of the world's largest economies. If we take the lagging countries, Bitcoin consumption is identical to what is required by the entire Republic of the Congo. The network “devours” more electricity than 166 other countries on our planet.
However, a comparison can be made in which the energy costs of Bitcoin will be insignificant. For example, the energy used by the world's main cryptocurrency would only be enough to power a country like the United States for 19 hours.
All the Bitcoin capacity with a huge reserve could be covered by one thermal power plant in Taiwan - the consumption would be only 20%. The same applies to the Chinese Three Gorges hydroelectric power station - only 30% of its capacity is sufficient for energy supply. In 2015, Google required more energy than the entire Bitcoin network did last year.
) is an extremely energy-intensive activity, because the essence of mining is calculating hash functions. Such calculations place a heavy load on processors, which is accompanied by high electricity consumption and powerful heat generation. The costs of electricity and cooling of farms must be taken into account when calculating investments.
To understand how much electricity a mining rig consumes, you can take the average power consumption of the equipment and adjust for the efficiency of the power supplies. This correction is often forgotten, but the power supply never operates at 100% efficiency; it loses some of the energy in the form of heat. Therefore, it is better to buy high-quality power supplies like APW3++, whose efficiency reaches 93%.
Approximate calculations
A single miner like Antminer T9 consumes up to 1690 W of energy, taking into account the efficiency of the power supply. A day of its operation will result in 40.56 kWh. At an electricity price of 3.5 rubles per kilowatt-hour, costs will be 141 rubles 96 kopecks per day, 4259 rubles per month or 51815 rubles per year. When using ten miners, annual expenses on electricity will exceed half a million rubles.
What's on a larger scale?
Industrial mining does not cost ten or even hundreds of ASIC modules; here the count goes to thousands and tens of thousands of devices. For example, the largest mining farm in Russia has about 3 thousand, produces a productivity of 38 petahash per second, and consumes more than 3 GW of electricity per month. The standard monthly electricity bill is 6.5 million rubles.
Such mining electricity costs are far from the limit. China's largest farms spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, as do farms in the United States. However, even such expenses are not comparable to the profits of these mining farms.
How to save on electricity for a mining farm?
As of 2017, mining Bitcoin, as the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, at home does not bring the expected results. To gain profit, you need tens, hundreds of specialized miners. Of course, using such equipment at home or in the garage is very problematic for a number of reasons. Therefore, now and in the future, the most reasonable solution is to buy equipment and place it in large mining farms. Not only does this give you massive productivity, but it also eliminates the hassle of space, power, and cooling.
If you live in a region where the electricity costs of a mining farm are very high, you should pay attention to the Farm Service for placing cryptocurrency mining equipment in the region with the lowest electricity price. As of 2017, such a region is still the Irkutsk region, where the cost of 1 kWh is slightly more than 1 ruble. Taking into account the complication of the mining process every year, the income received from a small number of miners will decrease, and the cost of electricity in your region may only increase. To get more profit in the mining process, it makes sense to save on electricity!
While mining, which at first glance seems like an opportunity for endless earnings, is actually a very energy-intensive process.
First, you need to understand what the essence of mining is. From English mining is translated as “mining”. Indeed, miners literally mine valuable currency, they just use software and special computers for this. By solving complex mathematical problems with computers, miners receive bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.
The process of mining cryptocurrencies puts a lot of stress on processors, which leads to high electricity consumption and high heat generation. Electricity is the main resource needed for cryptocurrency mining - all equipment consumes a huge amount of electricity.
Therefore, before you start mining cryptocurrency, you need to find out how much electricity the mining farm consumes.
How much does the mining farm consume in kW?
Let's take as an example a farm of 6 video cards. Such a farm consumes approximately 500W, and the price for electricity is on average 4 rubles. With a Bitcoin price of $15,000 at the time of writing, the farm will generate 92.9 BTC per hour, which is 2,229.63 rubles per day. When calculating electricity consumption of 2.5 kilowatts, we subtract 240 rubles for electricity per day. Thus, the net income of the farm per day will be 1989.63 rubles. With this calculation, the farm will bring in 59,689.15 rubles per month. But you need to remember that the electricity may go out and the computer may break down. In addition, mining processes are constantly being improved, which means the process of mining coins is slowing down.
How much electricity does a single miner consume?
For example, let's take a single-type miner Antminer T9. This is one of the most popular miners in the crypto world. This miner is used to mine Bitcoin. It requires up to 1690 W of energy. It will consume 40.56 kWh per day. With an average price of electricity of 4 rubles per kilowatt-hour, a miner will spend 141 rubles per day, which will be 4259 rubles per month, and 51815 rubles per year. With the current difficulty of bitcoin mining, Antminer T9 produces 0.0023 BTC per hour, which at the current exchange rate (the date of writing this article is December 7, 2017) is $34.48 or 2042 rubles. Thus, the miner’s monthly income will be 57,001 rubles.
How much does a mining farm consume per month in different countries?
The founder of many projects, mathematician Moritz Strube from Berlin, calculated the electricity consumption of the entire network. The mathematician estimates that worldwide, mining equipment consumes 1.17 terawatt-hours of electricity per month. For example, Slovenia consumes 1.08 terawatt-hours of electricity per month.
Bitcoin mining requires an amount of energy approximately equal to the emission of 7.6 million tons of carbon dioxide into the environment. According to mathematician calculations, this is the amount of exhaust gas emitted by a middle-class car after 43.6 billion km.
The scientist calculated that in Germany mining will not pay for itself due to the too high price of electricity. There, 1 kWh costs 29 euro cents (20.6 rubles). If all mining equipment was located in Germany, then 4.22 billion euros would have to be paid for electricity per year. Considering that only 657,000 new bitcoins are mined per year, mining in this country would be unprofitable.
Due to the high price of electricity in Europe, mining farms are usually located in exotic countries. For example, in Iceland, kWh costs 10 euro cents (7.1 rubles). The country is cold, so you don't need to spend any effort on cooling.
Another profitable location for a mining farm is Venezuela. Electricity there is even cheaper than in Iceland. Local residents are actively purchasing video cards and making up to $3,000 net per month.
But, of course, the power in the mining market belongs to the Chinese. There are 6 of the largest mining pools there and more than half of the world’s bitcoins are mined in the Middle Kingdom.
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Cryptocurrency mining using farms forces processors to work at their limit, which leads to significant overheating of the equipment and increased electricity consumption. How much electricity does it consume and how to calculate its maintenance costs?
Electricity is the main resource required for mining. Even a small home farm consumes a huge amount of kWh per day, month, year. An accurate calculation of energy consumption is required before purchasing equipment. After all, it may turn out that paying electricity bills will make the business unprofitable.
Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive process that requires large amounts of electricity.
How much does a mining farm consume in kW?
For example, consider a standard farm for six video cards. Its energy consumption is approximately 500 kW/h, with the average cost of kW/h in Russia being about 4 rubles. It is easy to calculate that at exchange rate 1 = $10 thousand, the daily profit of the farm will be 246,141 satoshi or 1,486 rubles. (calculation is made at the exchange rate as of February 28, 2018)
But we cannot discount unforeseen expenses, the possibility of operational failures, equipment breakdowns, etc. In addition, the mining process is constantly becoming more complicated, and accordingly, profitability is decreasing. This is necessary to avoid excess emission and depreciation of cryptocurrencies.
Solo mining – how much electricity does it consume?
As an example, let’s calculate the level of energy consumption of a single ASIC Antminer T9 - the most popular and highly productive today, created specifically for the mining of military hardware.
T9 consumes 1,690 W per hour, and 40 and 56 kW per day, respectively. Daily electricity consumption at a cost of 4 rubles. per kW/hour will be 141 rubles; 141 rub. x 30 days = 4,230 rub. per month; RUB 4,230 x 12 months = 50,760 rub. in year. Given the current difficulty of Bitcoin mining at the time of writing this material, one can earn 0.0023 BTC or 1.388 rubles per day. Thus, the monthly income of a solo miner will be 1,388 rubles. x 30 days = 41,640 rub. Net income: 41,640 rub. - 4,230 rub. = 37,410 rub.
Russian citizens have long been fascinated by a new way of earning money – cryptocurrency mining. Farm consumption in other countries
The famous German mathematician Moritz Strube conducted interesting studies regarding the energy costs required for mining.
In particular, the scientist calculated that:
- all mining equipment in the world consumes a total of 1.17 terawatt/hour per month; The amount of energy released during mining is approximately equal to the emission of 7.6 million tons of carbon dioxide. Approximately the same amount of exhaust gases will be emitted by a middle-class car if it travels 43.6 billion km;
- If all mining equipment was placed in Strube’s homeland in Germany, a country with one of the highest tariffs (0.29 euros or 20.5 rubles per 1 kW), then miners would have to pay bills of 4.22 billion euros per year. Taking into account the fact that the annual production of military-technical cooperation is limited to 657 thousand coins, Strube considers cryptocurrency mining in Germany unprofitable;
- Due to high European energy prices, farms are often located in other countries. Thus, in Iceland, 1 kW is three times cheaper than in Germany (0.1 euros or 7 rubles). In addition, due to the geographical location of the country, the installation of cooling systems is not required (in Iceland there is frost almost all year round);
- The second most convenient country in the world is Venezuela, where electricity is even cheaper than in Iceland. Local residents are actively buying video cards and earning up to $3 thousand per month. According to Venezuelan miners, they have difficulties only because the country’s government bans mining - they have to set up farms away from the eyes of law enforcement agencies.
Apparently, in his research, Herr Strube did not take into account Russia and other countries of the former USSR, where the cost of electricity is also quite low. Perhaps then his ranking of the most convenient countries for mining would look a little different.
As we know, the second expense item after purchasing a farm is energy costs. And when the farm is not of an industrial scale and is located in an apartment, there is a desire to separate farm expenses from expenses for household needs.
How to calculate the power of a farm at the time of cryptocurrency mining?
The simplest and not entirely accurate way is to use the MSI Afterburner program or any other program for working with settings and overclocking video cards. See how much one video card consumes at the time of production, multiply by the number of cards and add the cost of wiring. My program shows 85 watts, multiply by 6 to get 510 watts, add a couple of hundred to ensure the operation of the motherboard, processor, memory, risers and hard drive with Wi-Fi modem, and we get the desired figure, but the problem is, how much needs to be added. There are rumors that around 200 watts, we end up with 710 watt/hour, 17 kW/day, 511 kW/month or 1,656 rubles.
Use a multimeter to determine the power of the mining rig.
We also have such an option, but it is quite difficult to implement. It is necessary to connect a multimeter into the gap and find out the current consumed by the farm, i.e. pass through your measuring device the current necessary for the farm to operate in mining mode. For a simple farm this is not a problem, for a powerful one too, but the device may not withstand such a load. Next, having learned the current, we find out the voltage in the socket, and multiply the obtained data among each other. I’ll say right away that I didn’t find out the power of my farm this way.
Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) as a device power meter.
Also a good option. I have just this one, although I only received the information that you can find out the power through it by studying this issue on the Internet. And already rubbing my hands that the problem was solved and the data I needed was received, I was a little disappointed, my UPS model does not transmit this data to the control program, so again not my option. Although other models show both power and voltage and even calculate energy costs. It looks something like this:
The socket is a digital AC power meter.
I started exploring the vastness of online stores, but eventually came to Aliexpress. I started exploring possible options and came across a device from the Hidance brand. I decided not to think for a long time, but to place an order, the cost of the device at the time of order was 680 rubles, after 12 days I received my parcel. We open the packaging, open the box and here is this miracle device.
Rather, we connect our farm through it, launch it and look at the results without mining.
On the left side of the picture we see that our system, when operating without a miner running, consumes 87 watts, and after starting mining, the system begins to consume 773 watt/hour, multiply by a month and get 554 kW or 1,796 rubles. The difference is not so big compared to our approximate figures, but still almost 10%. And in general, it’s good that the difference is not so big and we are within the limits of theoretical calculations; it would be worse if it showed 1 kW per hour.
According to the passport, the device holds up to 16 amperes, although it’s probably better not to turn it on that much.
It has 7 modes and shows the network voltage, current consumption, power consumption, minimum and maximum power per hour. It shows how many kW was consumed during its operation, and if you indicate the cost of 1 kW, it will also calculate the costs in rubles.