I just ran the numbers for our effective 2025 electricity costs at home. We have an all-electric high-performance home with solar and energy storage. The surplus solar is exported to the grid, and during the summer we allow the grid to pull from our batteries too and get compensated for that (Virtual Power Plant events run by ConnectedSolutions in the north east, USA). So although our winter electricity bills are really high in Massachusetts, they are counter-balanced by almost zero bills in summer plus what we receive for the energy from our batteries via the VPP events. In addition we get incentives from our utility for charging our car only during off-peak hours. For 2025 our total net costs for electricity were just $483.55. Then when I calculated our total consumption of home plus car, it works out that our effective energy rate is $0.026 per kWh, which is AMAZING! The VPP events are the lifesaver here, without them we'd be toast.
What this tells me is that there is some logic to increasing our mining. Currently we have just one Bitaxe Gamma which I have mining in the Braiins pool most of the time, and I join the Rigly block parties when they occur (I also buy hashrate for those too). Obviously, increasing our mining means also increasing our consumption and our effective energy rate of $0.026 per kWh would increase – although that could be offset by efficiency gains elsewhere in the house. And clearly, the rewards from Braiins will never recoup the costs of the mining hardware itself. But I can't help be tempted by a NerdQaxe++.
Does anyone else have any guidance or suggestions here? How should I be thinking about this, and what steps should I take, if any?
-Tom
Edit: I should add that the incentives we receive from exporting to the grid from our home batteries, and charging our car off-peak go straight into Bitcoin. So the question becomes, is it even worth investing in more mining hardware, or does it just make sense to keep stacking by funneling the income into Bitcoin? I suspect it's the latter...
Depends on your motivation for mining. If it is purely for profit then your assumption is most likely correct though I've come to understand that you can profitably mine bitcoin at scale with sub 6 cent kw/h electricity. That of course assumes you have the space for industrial miners, the ability to deal with the sound (if air cooled) and heat dissipation even with immersion or hydro-cooled miners. The electricity is just one little part of the overall equation.
If you mine for more philosophical reasons and want to support decentralizing the hashrate and kicking in to help secure the network then that leaves a lot more wiggle room.
Here is my little garage Bitaxe and BitForge "farm". 15 to 20 TH/s depending on ambient temperature. I'm in Texas so the heat is a bigger issue for us than it would be for you.
I love seeing everyone's setups. It's early days for me so although I am very much interested in supporting the network, right now my goal is to just accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. I may jump on a NerdQaxe++ if they run a sale and I feel like some retail therapy, but my hunch is I should just pump all income into BTC, not small-scale hardware.
Which pools do you mine in?
-Tom
I solo mine to my own node and local instance of public_pool.io running on my Umbrel Home.
With your electricity rate you could dip a toe into the real thing by going with something like the Canaan Avalon Q. Good price point that isn't too loud, produce too much heat and generates a decent amount of hashrate relatively efficiently.
https://www.solosatoshi.com/product/canaan-avalon-q-90th-bitcoin-home-miner/
I believe this is almost always the case. But mining/hash generation is fun and with that sort of effective electricity cost you can't really go wrong.
I like my 21 Energy device a lot, the closest thing for the US market being a Heatbit. If you're heating with electricity anyways, it might make sense
If I had excess energy I'd seriously consider an industrial miner. I bet you can pick up an old S19 for pretty cheap as a lot of large miners seem to be pivoting to AI.
Try new some