The numbers
BTChub's Monitor compares live grid power with the most a miner can pay and still cover its electricity. Here is the same comparison over the past month, using daily averages of 5-minute real-time locational marginal prices (LMPsLMPLocational marginal price: the wholesale price of power at one point on the grid, set every few minutes by the costliest plant needed to meet demand there.) republished by the Dryos public API 1. The feed has gaps: ERCOTERCOTThe Electric Reliability Council of Texas: the operator of most of Texas's power grid and its wholesale electricity market, home to many US Bitcoin miners. hubs had data on 19 of the 30 days from September 15 to October 14, 2026, MISO Indiana on 21 and NYISO New York City on all 30. Days without data are left out, not filled in.
On the days with data, ERCOT's hubs averaged $41.91/MWhMWhMegawatt-hour, 1,000 kWh: the unit wholesale power is priced in. $76 per MWh is 7.6¢ per kWh, the unit on a household bill. (Houston), $42.01 (North), $37.49 (West) and $40.27 (South) 1. The month's highest daily average at a Texas hub was $108.76 at North on September 17.
Against breakeven
Breakevenbreakeven power priceThe most a miner can pay for electricity and still cover it from what its machines earn. Below it, running pays; above it, switching off saves money. Electricity only.See it on the site → here is hashpricehashpriceWhat a miner earns per unit of hashpower per day — revenue divided by hashrate. It falls as competition rises or price drops.See it on the site → divided by a fleet's power draw. A 20 J/THJ/THJoules per terahash: how much electricity a mining machine burns for each unit of work. Lower is more efficient. New machines are around 15–20; older ones 30 or more. fleet uses 0.48 MWh per PH/sPH/sPetahashes per second: a quadrillion guesses a second, the unit for a fleet of mining machines. One current machine does about 0.2 PH/s (200 TH/s). per day. Hashprice comes from each day's Kraken close and the difficultydifficultyA protocol setting that adjusts every ~2 weeks to keep blocks arriving about every 10 minutes, rising and falling with hashrate.See it on the site → then in force, with the 3.125 BTC subsidy only 23. Over the period it ranged from $77.7 to $85.4 per MWh and averaged $82.3. Fees would have raised it by under 1% 4.
By that measure, a miner paying the hub pricehub priceThe wholesale price of electricity at a trading point on the grid, reset every 5 to 15 minutes. Large buyers like miners pay close to it; households pay a fixed retail rate.See it on the site → would have earned an electricity margin almost every day. Only ERCOT North averaged above breakeven, on September 16 ($82 vs $78) and September 17 ($109 vs $78). Further north, MISO's Indiana hub averaged $64.27 and was above breakeven on 6 of its 21 days, with a high of $129.95 on September 16 1.
What this does not show
Daily averages hide intraday spikes, which is where curtailmentcurtailTo switch machines off on purpose, usually because power costs more than they earn or the grid is short of supply. Miners can do it in minutes.See it on the site → actually pays: a day that averages $42 can include hours far above breakeven. Hub LMPs are wholesale prices, not a miner's tariff, which adds delivery, demand charges and contract terms. The 20 J/TH figure is an assumption, and older fleets break even at much lower power prices. And difficulty rose 5.92% on October 16, cutting breakeven at the October 15 close to about $77 per MWh 3.
The live comparison for any hub, with your own efficiency and power cost, is on BTChub's Monitor. A data-only version is published every week in the Monitor brief.