Unavailable does not always mean powered off
A miner can stop submitting accepted work while still drawing power. Network outages, pool failures, startup, or fault states may leave parts of the device running. Revenue availability and electrical runtime are therefore not always the same percentage.
Use separate terms for active consumption, idle or fault consumption, and complete shutdown. A calculator that scales energy linearly with mining uptime is using a simplifying assumption. Label that assumption and replace it with measured behavior where the distinction is material.
Step-by-step
- Define availability. Decide whether uptime means powered, hashing locally, connected to a pool, or submitting accepted work. Use the same definition in the report.
- Record state durations. Track active, idle, fault, startup, and shutdown periods alongside their observed power or energy.
- Sum consumption. Multiply each state’s power by its hours, then add auxiliary energy. Apply revenue assumptions separately to productive accepted work.
Worked example
Illustrative example. A hypothetical device uses 3 kW for 20 hours and 0.2 kW for four idle hours. Daily consumption is 60 + 0.8 = 60.8 kWh, not the 60 kWh estimated by ignoring idle energy.
A small idle component can matter over longer outages. A device that remains at near-active draw during a fault can cause a much larger discrepancy.
Common mistakes
- Using pool online time as exact powered-on time.
- Assigning zero power to every rejected-work interval.
- Applying an uptime reduction twice to measured daily yield.
Questions and answers
Which uptime should I put in a revenue estimate?
Match the tool’s documented definition and yield basis. If yield already comes from a real period including downtime, applying the same discount again can understate output.
Apply this to your setup
Separate the productive-work log from the power-state log. For each interval record active, idle, fault, or off state and its measured draw. Use the resulting kWh total for energy estimates, while applying revenue assumptions only to the defined productive contribution. This prevents unavailable-but-powered periods from disappearing from the bill.
Sources and next steps
See availability metrics and power measurement.
How this guide was prepared: AI-generated drafting with the linked technical references and illustrative calculations. It does not report first-hand equipment tests or a named specialist review.