Should You Run an ASIC Miner Only During Off-Peak Hours? A Curtailment Worksheet

Running an ASIC miner only during off-peak hours can make sense when the revenue forgone during expensive hours is smaller than the electricity and other operating costs avoided. Use your actual tariff, measured running and paused power, and the cost of returning to stable hashing. A lower electricity bill alone does not prove a better result, and a useful schedule must survive missed restarts, changing revenue, and tariff exceptions.

Start with the price you actually pay

Find the rate schedule attached to your account before choosing operating hours. Record the applicable season, weekdays, weekends, holidays, billing time zone, and any daylight-saving treatment. A cheap overnight period advertised for a different customer class does not establish your miner's cost.

Separate charges that follow energy consumption from charges that remain when the miner pauses. The US Department of Energy's guide to evaluating utility rates distinguishes energy charges in kWh, demand charges tied to peak kW, and fixed charges. Pausing may reduce purchased energy without reducing a monthly demand charge, especially if another running period sets the peak or a historical peak still affects billing.

For the immediate run-or-pause decision, use the additional cost of consuming electricity in that interval. Include per-kWh delivery charges and applicable adjustments. Keep unavoidable monthly charges in the full-business budget; allocating them to each hour does not make them disappear when you stop hashing.

Compare running with the state you will actually use

There are at least three possible operating states: normal hashing, a supported lower-power profile, and paused mining. Complete electrical shutdown is a separate state. Pausing through firmware does not establish that wall power falls to zero; measure the miner and any cooling or supporting equipment that changes with it.

If a supported lower-power profile might preserve useful output through a moderately expensive period, establish its performance before adding a schedule. The underclocking test plan explains how to compare measured watts, stable hashrate, accepted work, and rollback behavior. That provides a measured alternative to treating every hour as a binary on/off choice.

Keep the comparison on the same footing. A dashboard's instantaneous hashrate cannot establish the revenue lost during a pause. Use accepted work and the pool's reward method over a representative window, then label the revenue basis and observation period. If your pool payouts are variable, money received in one short interval may reflect work performed earlier. Treat short-window revenue estimates as uncertain.

A worksheet for the run-or-pause decision

Use one row per tariff period and candidate operating state. Start with measurements from your current configuration; do not substitute another owner's wall-power reading or recovery time.

Input	What to record	Why it changes the decision
Tariff period	Start/end, season, day type, time zone	Determines when the billed rate applies
Running state	Firmware, profile, accepted hashrate	Defines the output you would forgo
Running power	Metered kW, including variable cooling	Defines energy consumed while hashing
Paused power	Metered kW with the intended pause method	Prevents assuming all running energy is avoided
Interval energy price	Currency/kWh, including variable delivery charges	Converts avoided kWh to avoided expense
Net mining revenue	Currency per running hour after applicable fees	Values the work you would lose
Recovery penalty	Extra energy, lost accepted work, operator time	Accounts for the transition back to normal
Constraints	Contract, temperature, noise, power-control limits	Can rule out a schedule even when arithmetic looks favorable

For a steady-price interval, define R as estimated net revenue per running hour, Prun and Ppause as measured kW, c as the interval price per kWh, and v as other avoidable running costs per hour. Define K as the extra cost of a pause-and-resume cycle, including any recovery revenue loss outside the planned paused interval. Do not count the same lost work twice.

Benefit of pausing for h hours
= h x [(Prun - Ppause) x c + v - R] - K

Pause when the benefit is positive and operating constraints permit it.

This is an incremental comparison, not a forecast of profit. For a variable-price period, calculate the bracketed amount separately for each interval and add the results before subtracting the recovery penalty. If power or accepted output also changes, use the corresponding measurements for that interval.

When using estimated revenue, write down the hashrate, uptime basis, pool and firmware fees, BTC conversion price or explicit currency revenue basis, and the difficulty or hashprice observation time. List exclusions such as capital cost, financing, taxes, repairs, fixed hosting charges, and demand charges. Without those inputs, the worksheet can compare energy consumption but cannot support an earnings claim.

Check the energy arithmetic before estimating earnings

Consider an invented metering example, not a specification for any miner: running power is 3.0 kW, paused power is 0.1 kW, and the planned expensive period lasts four hours. The energy avoided during that period is:

(3.0 - 0.1) kW x 4 hours = 11.6 kWh

If the example's variable tariff is $0.20/kWh throughout those four hours, avoided energy expense is $2.32. That number excludes the recovery penalty and any change in demand charges. It also says nothing about whether pausing is worthwhile until you compare it with the net mining revenue lost. These numbers are chosen solely to show the calculation; they are not a current tariff, hardware measurement, or return estimate.

Use a meter suitable for the equipment and installation. A miner's reported power can help track trends, but your bill depends on energy at the metered boundary. Keep that boundary consistent: comparing whole-circuit running power with miner-only paused power would exaggerate the saving.

Prove the schedule before leaving it unattended

Run the first pause-and-resume trial while someone can observe the miner. Use controls documented for the exact firmware and hardware, preserve the working configuration, and avoid adding new firmware, new pool settings, and a new schedule in the same experiment. Equipment used to switch electrical power must be appropriate for the load and installation; a household timer is not a universal solution.

Record when the pause was requested, when hashing stopped, when resume was requested, and when normal accepted work returned. Watch the pool as well as the local interface. Confirm that fan and thermal controls remain appropriate and that the miner does not enter repeated restart or tuning cycles. An unexpected temperature, power, or hardware error should end the trial and trigger the existing recovery procedure.

Trial result	Decision
Correct tariff window, lower measured consumption, reliable recovery	Extend observation across representative operating days
Miner pauses but supporting loads remain high	Recalculate with the measured paused-state power
Resume succeeds locally but accepted work remains low	Investigate recovery before enabling unattended operation
Wrong time zone, holiday behavior, or seasonal window	Correct the schedule and repeat the observed trial
Commands fail, schedules conflict, or recovery requires intervention	Restore the known working arrangement and investigate

Plan for a missed command and loss of the management connection. Record the intended fallback state, who receives an alert, and how the operator can regain control. Do not assume that disabling an automation profile cancels work already scheduled. For example, the Braiins Strike Price Curtailment documentation says that modifying or removing a profile does not deactivate running or scheduled curtailments; those require separate action on the curtailment page.

Keep electricity schedules separate from market automation

A fixed off-peak schedule follows your tariff clock. A market-based controller follows price data and its own planning cycle. They are interchangeable only if that data accurately represents the variable price you pay and the equipment supports the intended actions.

Braiins Price Adapt, for example, uses day-ahead prices, hashprice, and miner efficiency to plan actions. Its documented power-target optimization applies to supported miners running Braiins OS; other supported configurations can have pause/resume behavior without target optimization. Treat compatibility and the controller's price assumptions as separate checks. A wholesale price alone may omit delivery costs on your bill.

For a small installation, a clear schedule that can be audited may be more useful than a controller whose inputs cannot be reconciled with the utility statement. More elaborate automation becomes worth considering when prices vary enough that fixed hours regularly miss expensive periods or unnecessarily discard affordable ones. Test whether the added complexity improves actual results under your tariff.

What changes when mining hours become scarce?

An off-peak schedule can improve the contribution from operating an existing miner while reducing total accepted work. That creates a separate purchase question: can the available operating hours support the equipment's ownership costs? The site's mining break-even guide separates operating break-even from recovering the initial hardware expense.

Recovery overhead also matters more when useful running windows are short. A future tariff change, a different revenue environment, or a reliable lower-power profile can shift the preferred schedule. Keep the worksheet open to those changes rather than treating the first successful trial as a permanent rule. The question to revisit is whether each operating state still justifies its costs over the hours actually available.

Frequently asked questions

Is off-peak ASIC mining always cheaper than running all day?

It can reduce energy expense when you avoid a genuinely more expensive tariff period, but a smaller bill does not establish a better financial result. You also lose mining output, may continue drawing power while paused, and can incur recovery costs. Compare the same periods using your actual tariff and accepted work. Keep fixed and demand charges separate because they may remain unchanged after the schedule changes.

Should I pause mining or switch the power off?

Use the operating method documented for your exact equipment and measure its consequences. A software pause can leave the controller, fans, or other equipment consuming electricity, while a full shutdown creates a different recovery process. Neither method has a universal energy or reliability advantage. Record paused consumption, time to stable accepted work, and any operator intervention before deciding which state fits the intended schedule.

How do I calculate the electricity saved during peak hours?

Subtract measured paused-state kW from measured running-state kW, then multiply by the hours paused. Multiply that avoided kWh by the applicable variable price per kWh to estimate avoided energy expense. Calculate separate intervals when the price changes. Subtract additional recovery energy and account for any affected supporting loads. This calculation measures an expense difference; it does not include the value of mining output forgone.

Can I use a wholesale electricity price to schedule my miner?

Only after checking how that price relates to the amount you actually pay. A retail time-of-use schedule can differ from wholesale market movements, and delivery charges or other variable adjustments may be additional. Confirm the market, region, timing, units, and equipment compatibility before using a price controller. Reconcile its planned operating windows with your tariff instead of assuming a cheap market interval means cheap delivered electricity.

Will mining fewer hours make my ASIC last longer?

This worksheet cannot establish equipment lifespan. Fewer hashing hours change usage, but the chosen pause method, recovery behavior, temperatures, and hardware condition also matter. Do not assign a financial benefit to longer life without evidence applicable to your equipment. Observe errors and recovery reliability during trials, follow the manufacturer's operating limits, and evaluate maintenance or repair concerns separately from the measured energy saving.

How often should I review an off-peak mining schedule?

Review it whenever the tariff season, account terms, firmware, operating profile, or revenue assumptions change, and after an unexplained pause or missed restart. Periodically compare scheduled hours with actual accepted work and metered consumption. If recovery losses grow or the price difference narrows, rerun the worksheet. A schedule that worked under an earlier revenue basis can stop being useful even when its clock settings remain correct.