How much electricity (kWh) does an Antminer S9 consume in a day?
We run a data center where customers host Antminer S9 units and other miners.
Bitmain’s official specifications state that the units consume 1300 - 1340 watts at the wall with Bitmain’s APW3 power supply. They mention an expected discrepancy of +10%, but it is not clear if that discrepancy relates to power consumption, efficiency percentage, hash rate, etc..
Based upon our experiences, on average, Antminer S9s actually draw about 1,500 watts.
Most miners run these systems 24 hours per day — so the equation is simple:
1,500 x 24 = 36,000 watt hours, or 36kWh.
In a 30-day month, these systems will draw about 1,080 kWh.
If your power cost is $.12/kWh, it will cost you $129.60 to run a single S9 unit. There is one thing that most of our customers do not account for when they are comparing the cost of hosting their Antminer at our data center to what it costs them at home. They don’t think about the added cost of cooling the system.
Sure, during the winter, the heat can be used to heat your home. If you have electric heat anyway, and the miner is outputting heat to a room where you need it anyway (let’s temporarily forget about the crazy amount of noise these systems make), it may not be costing you much more than the power draw of the miner.
During the summer, however, depending on the climate in which you live, it can actually cost 50–100% or more in additional power to cool the heat exhausted by these miners. That could add another $65 - $130/month (or more if you have higher power rates) to your electric bill. Don’t believe this?
Consider that in a study done in 2011, the average PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) rating for data centers was 1.8. This means that for every one kW of critical load (servers — or in this case, Antminers), these facilities would consume .8kW for cooling and other “overhead.” Yes, data centers have become more efficient since then — and if your home is built like a data center (or if you have engineered a solution to use outside air for cooling, or something like that), then you may do better. Just be careful not to assume that you can calculate your electricity costs based upon the power consumed by the miner alone.
