Mining electricity cost calculator

Use your delivered rate

The single most common mistake here is entering the advertised generation rate instead of the delivered one. Your real cost per kilowatt-hour includes transmission, distribution, riders and tax — on many US residential tariffs that is close to double the headline figure.

Find the total on your bill and divide by the kilowatt-hours used. That number, not the one in the marketing, is what decides whether a machine pays.

Measure at the wall

Power supplies are not perfectly efficient and manufacturers quote the optimistic figure. If you have not measured actual draw with a meter, add roughly ten per cent to the rated wattage.

The seasonal part nobody counts

A 3,000-watt machine is a 3,000-watt heater. In winter, in a space you were heating anyway, that is a real offset. In summer, in a space you are cooling, you pay for the electricity twice — once to make the heat and once to remove it. Neither is modelled here, but both are real.