Got my first residential electric bill this morning and I’m honestly a lil bit stumped here. After 1 full month of my 4 card 2060 rig, my 1660ti duo miner and my gaming rig 2080super mining, my electric shot up 100 dollars.
So now I’m thinking maybe I should look at a free nights and weekends electric plan. Since I live in Texas the electric is deregulated so I have plenty of companies to choose from. Anyone have any thoughts? Experiences? Usually a free nights and weekends plan charges more during the day. But if I get true free nights and weekends I’m thinking my electric should still be cheaper. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
I had similar issues, also in Texas. Though, at this point I think the primary culprit is actually the air conditioning unit.
Well, first off, are you using an at wall wattage monitor to verify how much your rigs are actually using? You should be able to calculate their electric cost with your rate and see how much it should cost on a per month basis (there’s a bunch of online calculators you find to plug in the numbers). The electric listing in most mining apps is usually less than the entire rigs is actually using, since it tends to just account for the GPUS.
Next off, since it’s Summer in Texas, how are you cooling the rig? Is it just inside the house with the regular AC in charge of cooling it? Your electric company may have a breakdown of your usage. On mine, the AC went waaay up (and, it has stayed high with the rig off, so some of that may be seasonal increase of heat).
I was also debating a free nights and weekends plan, and just running the rigs then, but they do tend to be more expensive per watt during the rest of the time. If you figure out your total energy usage, and it’s free half the time, you can try just plugging in 50% of that value at the higher rate and see how the numbers look. That is a bit rough, since people do tend to use more electricity outisde of rigs during the day, when they’re awake. The same is also true with AC - it’s hotter during the day, so it runs more then. The rigs are the only thing likely to be running 24/7, so you may want to only count them 50%, and the rest of your electric usage still count at a higher value, like 75%.
As a post script, a third point, I forgot to add, is to check the details on your electric plan! Most plans in the Texas area have 3 different rates, depending upon how much electricity you use. Normally a rate under 1,000 Kw, 1,001-2,000 Kw, and 2,001+ Kw usage per month. Some of them scale down with higher energy usage (11.3 cents KwH instead of 11.5!), but some jump up dramatically after you get over a certain amount (7 cents a KwH for the first 1,000 Kw, then 20 cents!) Make sure to read the detailed explanation of a plan, as the advertised rate is often just the base rate… i.e. they advertise a 7 cents a KwH rate, but in reality that includes a 4 cents transportation charge, making the real rate 11 cents a KwH.
If your rig is in your house, a nights/weekends plan probably won’t benefit you. Most of them are setup so you need to use around 60% of your power during off-peak times to save any money. Since they include holidays as off-peak too, a continuous power load like a miner works out to be a $.015/kWh savings for me. It allows me to keep running an S17+ nights and weekends so there are some benefits with those plans.
Using Wattman for AMD GPU’s, lower the Power Level.
I continually stress that achieving the highest HashRate/Watt is the goal even if reducing power reduces the actual hashrate.
Regardless of dust, I keep my Rigs outside in the summertime and indoors in the Winter. Conserve electricity.
For Nvidia GPU’s use MSI’s Afterburner or X1 from EVGA. Set core clock less than 100, Power, Temp, Voltage as low as possible with Mem Clock at -500. That will drop your power usage to achieve a high hash/watt.
lmao it shot up because you live in Texas and it is June! bro I bet your AC is running a bit more this time of year without the miners I know mine are here in southern Louisiana they also charge more for electricity when the demand goes up this time of year
You’re probably running at least a thousand watts there. 24/7 that’s lets say 25KWH/day. So that’s at $0.10 (may be more!) $2.50 a day x 30 - you’re running $75-100 bucks a month for electric. Plus extra cooling because you’ve got it inside. Nothing surprising there.
Could you block out your personal information and post a picture of your electric bill? Pref. two, before and after your mining rig went online
Then we can determine your price per KWH and a relative change in billing
You would really benefit from a kill a watt energy meter or a wemo smart plug w/ power monitoring so you can determine the exact power draw from your mining rig as well
Outside as in on the covered back porch. I have a concrete slab with roof overhead, and place my rigs in the middle up against the kitchen sink wall. Dump that heat outside