I am living in an older house in Europe. In the country I live the Energy costs are around 0.3$/KWH.
We are having a night storage heater in our flat which pulls around 20 KWH per day from the wall. For everybody not familiar with these: They used to be popular in the 1970/1980 when the energy costs were really low. The idea behind them is/was, that during the night cycles they are going to heat up and store the heat and release it over the day. Due to the fact that energy costs are normally lower during the night, due to a lower demand, they used to be popular. Nowadays even though energy costs are still lower during the night, it’s kinda expensive.
I have 3 „old“ GPU’s. 2 RX 480 and 1 RX 470. They are mining now and they are heating my room. No joke its nice and warm in my room.
Event hough mining is not profitable with those cards in my region, due to the high energy costs. (During a not bullish market)
Heating with GPU’s compared to heating with the night storage heater is!
For the people interested in the calculation:
The night storage heater puls around 20 KWH over the day on, due to the lower costs during the night we have around 0.20$ per KWH.(It's a pretty old one) Adds up to, 4$ a day, 120$ a month just for heating.
Running the mining rig with 3 cards is around 420 Watts per hour. Which adds up to 10.08 KWH per Day. Let’s say 10 KWH. We have 8 hours counting as „night“ and 16 counting as day. Which means (8 Hours x 0.42 KWH x 0.2 $ ) + (16 Hours x 0.42 KWH x 0.3 $) = 0,672$ + 2,016 = 2.69€ per Day // 80.7$ per Month.
The saving is 39,3$ per Month.
And we haven’t calculated the mining earning right now.
The rig runs around 86 Mhs and 420 Watt from the wall.
Whattomine says we get around 3$ per Day. So actually I am earning money with it right now.
120 $ - 80,7$ = 39,3$ per Month as plus. But please have in mind the prices are high right now, the month before it was more around 2$ per Day.
With a normal price it will look like this.
60$ - 80,7$ = -20,7$ for a whole month of heating, compared to 120$ before!
So I am saving 99,3 $ a month.
Those people who have a mining rig as well and wonder about the noise:
As you can see in the screenshot the fans are not running pretty high. I tried days to find the best settings and sweet spot of temperature/Hash/energy. My main PC with a Ryzen 3600 with a stock fan is more noisy then the whole rig.
Have nice day :)