Cold climate crypto

[Carrot1151]

I was just in a business park unit to pick up an order from a small warehouse  and saw that they were running a couple of racks of older GPUs for mining in one corner. I was curious as we are in Glasgow and electricity isn't exactly cheep here, but when i spoke to the guy he said part of what makes it pay is they have been able to save on the heating bill this winter as the gpu heat warms the whole space and they shut off the normal heater. Has anyone else seen this sort of thing?

[porina]

In the right conditions it can work. I kinda do similar at home, although it isn't mining. My only heating is electric, no heat pump things. I get the same heat running computers as I would from same power heating, but I get work out of it. Mining is one case where you can get some income so it helps offset the cost.

 

Now, if you're using electricity in place of a cheaper heating method, that may not make sense. When gas was cheap for example, that would make more sense. Don't know about now.

[IkeaGnome]

I live in Alaska. My heat is propane. I'll mine enough to pay for the month's electricity costs of running the GPUs then fold with the rest. 

Spoiler

That's from last summer, but even in winter it's about that much warmer in the living room. The living room is in a separate part of the house from the other rooms minus the kitchen, but that sensor is a good ways away from the living room.

[gergy008]

1 hour ago, Carrot1151 said:

I was just in a business park unit to pick up an order from a small warehouse  and saw that they were running a couple of racks of older GPUs for mining in one corner. I was curious as we are in Glasgow and electricity isn't exactly cheep here, but when i spoke to the guy he said part of what makes it pay is they have been able to save on the heating bill this winter as the gpu heat warms the whole space and they shut off the normal heater. Has anyone else seen this sort of thing?

All electronics are basically space heaters, other than light and sound the rest of the energy consumed goes straight out as heat. Even then, the light & sound is eventually converted into heat by your surroundings.

[Obioban]

They function as resistance heat, which is one of the least efficient ways to heat a space.

 

Better than fighting the AC with it in the summer, but hardly a green solution.

[Heliian]

No, it's not efficient at all.  

 

Everyone claims that they're paying their bills with mining but unless you're running a shit ton of good cards you're not really making that much if anything.  

 

I've yet to see an actual business plan for gpu mining.  Might have something to do with the ridiculous volatility of popular coins or that you need to factor in expenses like labour, maintenance and depreciation.  Gpu mining is one of man's dumbest creations.  

 

 

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

It would be good reason only if GPUs were water cooled and water would be used as heating (re: Whole-Room water cooling). Thats how Google does it in their server locations (while producing enough heat to be sold to local heating grid). I think the guy is just telling you same thing he tells to his boss.

[Carrot1151]

On 2/18/2022 at 7:40 AM, LogicalDrm said:

It would be good reason only if GPUs were water cooled and water would be used as heating (re: Whole-Room water cooling). Thats how Google does it in their server locations (while producing enough heat to be sold to local heating grid). I think the guy is just telling you same thing he tells to his boss.

I was speaking to his boss and he seemed quite happy not having to pay the gas bill for the heating compared to the electric the mining was using but I think was charging back for the electric.  

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Power is power, you can burn it through a resistor (space heater) or run it through ten billion transistors computing hash (mining rig).

 

Ideally I'd rather heating be done with heat pumps, and I'd rather have currently scarce GPU silicon not used for heating, especially since GPU silicon is made scarce BY mining. That said, I find the least offensive use of crypto mining when a computer user is using their spare GPU cycles for mining to repay their rig and is saving on heating bills in a cold climate.

[Demonic Donut]

Not efficient at all if you have any source of heat other than resistance heaters...

 

A good heat pump gives 10BTU per watt of electricity.

 

Resistance heat is 3.41 BTU per watt. If you ignore any fans that may run. So we'll assume radiant heat

 

Natural Gas heaters range from 80% to 98% efficient and gas is measured in Therms (1 therm = 100,000btus)

 

Let's assume 6 million btus needed in a winter month.

 

Heat pump would need 600 kWh, or $60.00.

 

Gas furnace at 80% efficiency would be 75 therms of gas, or $73.50

 

Gas furnace at 98% efficiency would be 61.2 therms of gas, or $60.

 

Resistance heat would need 1,759 kWh, or $175.90.

 

However, if you can offset the cost of your bill with the earnings it can make financial sense even if it's not efficient.

 

I pay roughly $0.98 per therm and $0.10 per kWh. These are the prices I used.  I used the 6 million btus as a rough estimate for a moderately cold winter month for me, based on my Natural Gas usage which is my heat source.

 

I run nicehash on my two gaming computers when we aren't using them and it's cold out. They make me between 75-100 a month above what I use in electricity for them, depending on run time. I still use my gas heat though, each card only uses 100w and it's not nearly enough to heat my house. If I ran them 24/7 the cards would put out roughly 500,000 btus in a month. This isn't including power loss from the PSUs, or other consumption from CPU and fans. One of the computers runs 24/7 anyway because it runs other things anyway. I'd be curious to see what my overall draw is on each system, maybe I'll measure it one day.