We’ve always known that mining Bitcoin uses a lot of electricity. And as more blocks are continually mined, then becomes more and more power intensive to mine the next. Recent studies have revealed that Bitcoin mining activities has used more than seven gigawatts of power on average in the past year.
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A study from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates that the global bitcoin mining industry uses 7.46 GW, equivalent to around 63.32 terawatt-hours of energy consumption. The study also notes that miners are paying around $0.03 to $0.05 per kWh this year. Given that a March estimate put the cost to mine a full bitcoin is around $7,500, the average miner still stands to make over $4,000 in profit from the operation.
Mining the digital currency can be an expensive affair these days, but it doesn’t need to be if done casually on the side. Even if you’re just running a single dedicated machine, though, you’ll need some decent hardware to solve the algorithms needed. Of course, it’s the other end of the spectrum that sucks a lot of energy from the grid.
Some operations are massive, and big business – some of which houses more than 50,000 extremely high-end computers that are churning away.
“By our assessment, the Bitcoin network can exceed 260EH/s in Hashrate in the next 12–14 months,” according to a July study from Bitooda. “Led by a modest increase in available power capacity from 9.6 to 10.6GW and an upgrade cycle that will replace older generation S9 class rigs with newer S17 and next-generation S19 class rigs.”
Seeing as some of these massive operations are making millions of dollars with their Bitcoin mining operations, it is understandable that they are willing to foot a very large electric bill. However, if it becomes a problem for the local electricity grid, things may change quickly.
