Hi all. Guntis here from Mineshop.eu (an EU mining hardware shop based in Ireland), so I have a commercial interest. Sharing a free tool and the UK numbers behind it, because UK electricity pricing changes the maths for hashrate heating quite a bit.
UK numbers at the Ofgem price cap for October to December 2026 (26.32p/kWh average unit rate by Direct Debit; Ofgem also removed VAT on electricity from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027):
- A 140 W device (Avalon Nano 3S class) running 24/7 uses about 1,226 kWh a year, roughly £323, and nearly all of it ends up as heat in the room.
- A 17 W Bitaxe Gamma: about 149 kWh a year, roughly £39.
- On Economy 7 with seven off-peak hours, a device running around the clock only uses about 29% of its energy at the night rate. Running it off-peak only cuts runtime by about 70% and the bill by more.
- Compared with a heat pump, which delivers several kWh of heat per kWh of electricity, a miner only competes with resistive heat (panel heaters, oil radiators, immersion). There, the mining income is a partial rebate on heat you would buy anyway.
Free calculator (no sign-up or cookies; formulas and tests are public): Home Bitcoin Miner Running Cost Calculator (UK): Price Cap vs Economy 7 | Mineshop You can enter your own single-rate or two-rate prices.
The longer UK write-up, including what UK buyers pay in import VAT when buying from the EU: ASIC Bitcoin Mining in the UK 2026 – Legal, Cost & Setup Gui
Two questions for UK members:
- If you are on a half-hourly tariff such as Octopus Agile, do you schedule your heaters on price signals, and with what control stack (Home Assistant, Braiins, custom scripts)?
- Has anyone measured how much resistive heating a miner actually displaces when a room thermostat is in the loop?