On the Powering of Bitcoin Miners
Powering your Bitcoin Miners.
How not to die in the process.
What voltage to use, and some specifics to look up before you make the choice to host
your own machines.
My name is Nicholas Johnson and this is the Space Warehouse (look at these sweet new animated
effects, I paid good money for those.)
If you are planning on running some bitcoin miners in your home or at your business, there
are a few important things to look for before you choose how many S19’s youre going to
buy.
At the top of that list, and its at the top now because past me, 2021 me didnt look up
the fine print in his electric bill.
I had looked up our rates and saw that in Orlando, electricity has a “base charge”
of 6.498 cents per kWh for the first 1000KWH, which, 6 s19js blows through in 2 days - and
then 8.998 cents per kwh after that.
Those were the numbers I used to make my calculations on how much money these things would cost
to run…
Rookie.
We also have a roof full of solar and even though I had been running GPUs for months,
our electric bill was usually zero.
After a full month of six S19j pros, three L3+’s and 5 RTX 3080s humming along - I
look at my bills and I owe $2500 in electricity!!!
MY calculations had it costing me around $1500-1600 a month..
how could I be off by SO MUCH - is my neighbor steeling from me!????
No.
My electric company has a sneak score of like 90, and decided to separate two more charges
on the bill..
A fuel charge and an asset Securitization Charge- adding 4.7 cents and .25 cents to
the 9 cents I thought I was paying, which means I REALLY pay 14 cents per kwh and thats
really high.
That makes these remote hosting options look way more appealing..
A month from now I will be mentioning my trusted and good looking hardware supplier, Musk Miners
as an option for that, when their operation comes online and ready to accept clients.
This next thing adds a level of confusion, but its worth mentioning if you have a commercial
space, that half of my machines are at the Space Warehouse which is using commercial
power with a slightly lower rate but TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO DOLLARS OF TAXES ADDED ON.
There exists a different rate you can ask for from your power company on commercial
power, called Demand rate - where you pay a pretty high base amount, like 800 dollars,
but then your electricity is 2 cents a kilowatt hour, so if you use enough it makes it cheaper.
so if you have access to commercial power you might want to do the math on that - and
SURELY its different depending on the state and municipality where you have things plugged
in.
Ok, so that covers the money part to make it scarier to run machines - and actually
only the first money part of the money part…
The next preflight check before buying some S19’s is take a look at how much total power
you even have available at your spot in the first place.
This is my electrical panel on the back of my house.
STOP RIGHT HERE…
By opening this panel, and especially when taking out this guard thing to gain access
to the inside of the panel - if you dont have experience with this or an experienced person
with you, stop - call an electrician.
Beyond the threshold of the outside of this box, there are more places you can touch that
will hurt you or kill you than there are places you can touch that wont.
You really really have to know which places you cant touch.
Or just flick that switch at the top that says 200 - then you can touch anything below
it, BUT NOTHING ABOVE IT.
Do not touch the bus bars.
Safety meeting over - these two super thick wires coming in to the main breaker of this
panel will carry any and all electricity being used for the property.
Each of these lines will be at around 120 volts and when used together will give you
ABOUT 240 volts.
Looks like Ive got a few bonus volts and thats totally fine in either direction, however
it WILL affect your total load capabilities.
S19j’s can actually take anywhere from 200-250 volts and run just fine.
This tool is super handy to check how much power is being used for a particular thing.
This one is a Klein CL220 - Ill leave a link in the description to buy one if you want
one - theyre like 60 bucks and can be described as an amp clamp, or a clamp meter.
So, looking at my house, if I put my amp clamp on each leg of the power coming in, you can
see Im pulling 49amps on one leg, and 47 amps on the other leg.
The reason these measurements are different is because anything running off of a “regular”
outlet in your house - the fridge, TVs, your computers, lamps, your toaster, the internet,
your coffee machine… also the lights in your house - all of those things use 120 volts.
So they will be running off of only one or the other of these big thickies on the top
of the panel.
But anything that draws significant power - your water heater, stove, your drier and
most importantly, your bitcoin miners!
Those things will all pull power from BOTH of these fat fat wires.
My panel has a 200amp main breaker, and that means that I can not be pulling more than
200 amps on either of these main wires.
The math gets a little funny just because 120v things will pull double the number of
amps as 240v things when drawing the same actual amount of power.
We dont need to get into specifically why that is for this to be useful..
But for instance, a typical hair drier will pull ABOUT 15 amps from ONLY ONE of these
stocky, chunky power cables, it runs on 1850 watts.
A typical stock S19j pro 104 will also only pull 15 amps - but it will take 15 amps from
EACH of these hefty, meaty cables, and runs on AROUND 3100 watts.
You cant let either of these beefy wires get up to 200, and if youre observing the commonly
accepted safety range of 80% of your box, you cant let either of them get to 160amps
- so whichever one measures higher is the one that matters.
The loser is nothing, only the princess matters.
here’s how you can use this amp clamp to measure how much total power your house is
using, and therefor how many miners you can run at home without having to pay to have
your electric company add more.
First - turn literally everything on.
Turn on your stove, your dishwasher, your washer and drier, make your AC run, cook something
in the microwave, turn on a hair drier - all the lights, all the TVs - drain out some hot
water so your water heater kicks on..
RUN IT ALLLLLL..
While all of this is happening, run outside and slap the amp clamp on each of these profuse,
abundant power cables at the top of the panel and see what the meter says…
As long as the higher number is at least 15 amps less than 80% of the size of your main
breaker - youre clear to buy!
Powering your bitcoin miners.
In the case of an S19 or S19J Pro, on the back of the unit, you’ll see these two C14
plugs.
To your eyes, this may be a common plug for something like a printer, or power brick,
or the plug that goes into the back of a speaker or your television.
Those things are all 120 volts, so without instruction, you may assume you can just plug
this into two wall outlets.
You can not.
This machine requires 240 volts of power, and therefor BOTH of the C13s females you
plug into these C14 males need to be wired at 240 volts. (or 208 volts in a commercial
setting).
A common solution to this is to have an electrician come and install an L6-20r outlet in your
wall - and then you’ll buy a PDU (power distribution unit) that accepts a C19 plug
end, and has an array of C14 to C13 receptacles pretty much like a beefy power strip.
I am so sorry for all the numbers and letters, but it will help in your googling to know
what theyre called.
Using a PDU is great for GPU mining, or smaller ASICs like an S9 or L3+ because you can plug
a bunch of them into one PDU..
But the S19’s pull so much power that you’d be getting a different PDU for each miner,
unless you pay a ton of money to get a 50amp one.
So an alternative to using the PDU is finding a cord that goes from L6-20r to 2x L6-20’s
OR L6-20r straight to 2 C13 ends.
I actually hand made a couple of those during testing, only to finally land on my FINAL
power strategy which is just wire two 8 gauge cords straight into their own breaker on the
panel, and go from breaker to two C13’s.
I will have links to ALL of these types of cords and plugs in the description of this
video.
Your individual breakers for your miners should also follow the 80% rule, so even though at
240 volts, an S19j pro should only pull around 14amps - you still want AT LEAST a 20 amp
breaker for each machine, or a 40 amp breaker if youre going to put two machines on the
same plug.
If you ARE putting two machines on the same plug, know that youre sending 6400 watts or
so through those wires, so you need to choose a heavy gauge - for 30amps, you want minimum
a 10guage wire at 240 volts.
If youre planning to dip your toes into the wonderful world of overclocking - you need
to reassess everything.
If you ask a 104TH S19j to run at 120TH, instead of 3200 watts its going to pull closer to
3600 watts or even 3800 watts - which bumps you up to 16amps per machine.
In order to use your handy clamp meter on an individual line, or individual machine,
you have to be able to clamp the jaws around a SINGLE hot wire.
That means it wont work on a premade C13, C14, C19, L620 cord that has all the wires
wrapped into one wire, that will read zero.
The easiest way to do this if you ARE using those types of power cords is back in the
breaker panel again - 240 volt breakers have two hot wires coming out the side of them,
just clamp around one of those wires and you’ll get a reading on how much power is being pulled
from that one circuit.
Side note - S9’s and L3+’s will run on either 120 volts or 240 volts - they will
use the same number of watts either way - the same total amount of power, but they will
pull HALF the number of AMPS if you run them on 240, so run them on 240.
And dont forget to think about your ventilation, or pumps and dry coolers and how much power
they will draw for cooling.
Big fans are relatively low draw compared to the miners, but theyre not nothing..
Whew!
That was a lot.