{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "page_kind": "article",
 "pack_kind": "generate",
 "slug": "electricity-per-image",
 "title": "Electricity per image, card by card",
 "dek": "What one generated picture costs in electricity on each graphics card this site has measured, at one dated national price, from seconds and board joules already published: a 1024-pixel FLUX.2 [klein] 4B picture at 8 steps from about three cents a thousand on a laptop card to nine on a used 12 GB card, and the whole shelf from under a cent a thousand to a dollar and a half.",
 "published": "2026-11-03",
 "series": [
  "bench"
 ],
 "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
 "status": "pending-judge",
 "pack_note": "no judge is seated, so every chip is held",
 "notice": "items with published:false are held and are not this page's published words",
 "source": {
  "url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/electricity-per-image/",
  "md_url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/electricity-per-image/index.md",
  "md_sha": "6f1fa99c885b274abff436de49fcfeffdbd69ce73ab37cf16ee83241de2e78b9",
  "html_sha": "43387fab5926a0d21f9ed71d63d72f6ac992c02af7a56c1f6a511bbc74306c4e",
  "anchors_sha": "b98592d064cdcf3f109d2f30c4ce1c540d26062cd6b53250b9ed004edc0f7f2f"
 },
 "short": {
  "paragraph": "A thousand FLUX.2 [klein] 4B pictures at 1024×1024 and 8 steps, one at a time, cost 3.16 cents of board electricity on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU (24 GB) under Dynamic Boost, 4.77 cents on a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5080 Solid CORE OC (16 GB) at its stock 360 W, and 8.33 to 8.90 cents on three Ampere cards at 350 W: an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra (24 GB), an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 XC3 Ultra (24 GB) and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition (12 GB). Drawn back to back for ten minutes, 3.39 cents on an NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Workstation Edition (96 GB) held to 300 W. Four times the steps costs 3.5 to 3.9 times the electricity, four times the pixels 3.0 to 3.3 times, a heavier model 1.5 to 2.5 times. The cheapest published picture is 0.79 cents a thousand, a 512×512 klein picture at 8 steps on the laptop card held to 95 W, its share of a batch of three; the dearest is 150 cents a thousand, Z-Image-Turbo at 2048×1280 and 32 steps on the 12 GB card with the model partly off the card. The price is 18.31 cents a kilowatt-hour, the U.S. residential average for July 2026; nothing was measured for this page. Board power, not the wall, except one print-lab batch of three 512×512 plates at 32 steps, read both ways: 1.27 watt-hours at the card, 1.87 at the meter.",
  "from_dek": false,
  "counts": {
   "words": 2567,
   "minutes": 12,
   "tables": 2,
   "kit": false
  },
  "bullets": [
   {
    "text": "the wall reading for a batch of three plates was 1.87 watt-hours",
    "figure": "1.87 watt-hours",
    "cite": "the-one-wall-reading",
    "quote": "A bench of twelve on 2026-09-12, 03:34Z to 03:38Z, read 18.3 seconds a batch and 1.27 watt-hours at the card, and 367 W at the box's meter against 102 W idle that minute, 1.87 watt-hours at the wall: 23.25 cents a thousand batches at the card and 34.24 at the meter, the \"about 34 cents\" that page prints.",
    "span": [
     12521,
     12539
    ]
   }
  ]
 },
 "sections": [
  {
   "id": "what-is-being-counted-and-at-what-price",
   "heading": "What is being counted, and at what price",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    2127,
    3194
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     2127,
     3194
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1067,
   "digest": "the article calculates the cost of generating images by converting joules or watt-hours into money using an average American home electricity price of 18.31 cents a kilowatt-hour. figures are expressed in cents per thousand pictures.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-arithmetic-once",
   "heading": "The arithmetic, once",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    3194,
    3743
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     3194,
     3743
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 549,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-table",
   "heading": "The table",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    3743,
    6825
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     3743,
     6825
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 3082,
   "digest": "a table compares various cards, including an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU 24 GB and an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra 24 GB, across different power settings and run durations. it details time, energy, and cost per thousand pictures.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "steps-pixels-and-the-model",
   "heading": "Steps, pixels and the model",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    6825,
    9113
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     6825,
     9113
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 2288,
   "digest": "this section examines how 32-step costs vary by pixel count and model type. it notes that increasing steps from 8 to 32 at 1024×1024 on klein costs 3.5 to 3.9 times the electricity, while different models like Z-Image-Turbo and FLUX.1 [dev] have different costs.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-laptop-and-why-its-figures-are-so-low",
   "heading": "The laptop, and why its figures are so low",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    9113,
    10684
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     9113,
     10684
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1571,
   "digest": "the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU 24 GB shows low costs due to a 95 W power cap and a batch of three plates. at 95 W, it drew 0.0431 watt-hours for one picture.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-dearest-picture-on-the-shelf",
   "heading": "The dearest picture on the shelf",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    10684,
    11826
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     10684,
     11826
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1142,
   "digest": "the most expensive picture is Z-Image-Turbo at 2048×1280 and 32 steps on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition 12 GB at 350 W, costing 150.04 cents a thousand.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "the-one-wall-reading",
   "heading": "The one wall reading",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    11826,
    13066
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     11826,
     13066
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1240,
   "digest": "one instance measured electricity at the wall for a batch of three plates of FLUX.2 [klein] 4B on an RTX 3090 (24 GB) held at 250 W. the wall reading was 1.87 watt-hours.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "what-idling-would-cost-and-why-it-is-not-here",
   "heading": "What idling would cost, and why it is not here",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    13066,
    13468
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     13066,
     13468
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 402,
   "digest": "the article does not include an idle bill because no source prints what a card draws while holding an image model and doing nothing.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "what-this-page-does-not-say",
   "heading": "What this page does not say",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    13468,
    14442
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     13468,
     14442
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 974,
   "digest": "the page clarifies it reports board power rather than wall power, uses different instruments for different recipes, and does not include an idle bill or 768-pixel cells.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  },
  {
   "id": "how-to-check-our-work",
   "heading": "How to check our work",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    14442,
    14944
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     14442,
     14944
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 502,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": "credits"
  },
  {
   "id": "who-ran-this-and-thanks",
   "heading": "Who ran this, and thanks",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    14944,
    16343
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     14944,
     16343
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 1399,
   "digest": null,
   "digest_skipped": "credits"
  },
  {
   "id": "sources",
   "heading": "Sources",
   "level": 2,
   "span": [
    16343,
    17274
   ],
   "chunks": [
    [
     16343,
     17274
    ]
   ],
   "chars": 931,
   "digest": "the article lists five source pages that provided the data, including findings on card performance, electricity prices, and laptop versus desktop comparisons.",
   "digest_skipped": null
  }
 ],
 "chips": [
  {
   "id": "c-dc1e9673",
   "q": "how is the electricity cost calculated?",
   "a": "The cost is determined by converting joules or watt-hours into money using an average electricity price of 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour. The final figures are expressed in cents per thousand pictures.",
   "cites": [
    "what-is-being-counted-and-at-what-price"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-8cbde0ed",
   "q": "what formula converts joules to cents per thousand?",
   "a": "The calculation used is joules per picture divided by 3,600,000, multiplied by 18.31, and then multiplied by 1,000.",
   "cites": [
    "the-arithmetic-once"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-33900929",
   "q": "how do different power settings affect energy use?",
   "a": "Holding a card to 300 W instead of a higher limit can save energy. For example, a 3090 Ti and a 3090 saved 8.9 and 9.6 per cent of energy respectively when held to 300 W for ten minutes.",
   "cites": [
    "the-table"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-8f3137ef",
   "q": "how do increasing steps affect electricity costs?",
   "a": "Moving from 8 to 32 steps at 1024×1024 on klein results in electricity costs that are 3.5 to 3.9 times higher, accounting for the extra work beyond the initial prompt and decode.",
   "cites": [
    "steps-pixels-and-the-model"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-6134fab2",
   "q": "why are some laptop electricity figures so low?",
   "a": "Low figures result from a power cap holding clocks down and the use of a batch of three plates drawn in one submit, which reduces the energy per picture compared to drawing one at a time.",
   "cites": [
    "the-laptop-and-why-its-figures-are-so-low"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-285f698d",
   "q": "how much more energy does the wall draw than the board?",
   "a": "In one recorded instance, the wall reading was 1.47 times the board reading, measuring 1.87 watt-hours at the wall compared to 1.27 watt-hours at the card.",
   "cites": [
    "the-one-wall-reading"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-b1ab5d17",
   "q": "what information is missing from this data?",
   "a": "The article does not provide an idle bill, data for 768-pixel cells, or figures for 4- or 20-step cells.",
   "cites": [
    "what-this-page-does-not-say"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  }
 ],
 "related": [
  {
   "slug": "electricity-per-million-tokens",
   "why": "shares ground with § What this page does not say · § What this page does not count"
  },
  {
   "slug": "flash-next-on-three-cards",
   "why": "shares ground with § The table · § Each card, in one paragraph"
  },
  {
   "slug": "one-3090-against-one-3090-ti",
   "why": "shares ground with § The table · § At a glance"
  }
 ],
 "thanks": "## Who ran this, and thanks {#who-ran-this-and-thanks}\n\nThe figures are five pages' work and not this one's, the pages in Sources below; the U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes the price monthly where anyone can read it. **NVIDIA** made the silicon, the Founders Edition board, the laptop part, the workstation card and the driver every board watt here was read from; **ZOTAC**, **EVGA** and **Gigabyte** the other boards, and **MSI** the laptop that carries its board. The pictures stand on **ComfyUI** and the **comfy-kitchen** and **comfy-aimdo** libraries beneath it, on **PyTorch** and **NVIDIA's CUDA**, on **Astral's uv** and on **Network UPS Tools**. The models are Black Forest Labs' **FLUX.2 [klein] 4B** and **FLUX.1 [dev]** and Alibaba's Tongyi Lab's **Z-Image-Turbo**, with Alibaba Cloud's **Qwen 3 4B**, Google's **T5-XXL** and OpenAI's **CLIP ViT-L/14** as their text encoders; **Hugging Face** hosted every pinned file. Each source page names the licence it found for its models; this page ran nothing and adds none.\n\nA small human team owns the cards, set the rules before the runs and signed the figures on each source page; a fleet of AI agents ran the harnesses and did the division here under that team's rulings. Thanks to the readers who asked, on every forum this workshop reads, what a picture actually costs on the card they have: this page is that division.",
 "kit": null,
 "seat_class": {
  "writer": "gemma-class",
  "judge": null,
  "writer_runtime": "vllm"
 },
 "bench": {
  "bullets_written": 3,
  "bullets_kept": 1,
  "digests_written": 10,
  "digests_kept": 9,
  "chips_written": 8,
  "chips_kept": 7,
  "chips_grounded": 0,
  "chips_published": 0,
  "dropped_by": {
   "new_noun": 0,
   "figure": 1,
   "length": 0,
   "cite": 0,
   "judge": 0,
   "quote": 0,
   "directive": 0,
   "redaction": 0,
   "profanity": 0,
   "identifier": 0,
   "bare_figure": 0,
   "house_voice": 0,
   "editorial": 0,
   "hand-edit": 3
  },
  "new_noun_tokens_checked": [
   "0.0431",
   "000",
   "1",
   "1.27",
   "1.47",
   "1.87",
   "1024×1024",
   "12",
   "150",
   "150.04",
   "16",
   "18.31",
   "20-step",
   "2048×1280",
   "24",
   "250",
   "3",
   "3.5",
   "3.9",
   "300",
   "3080",
   "3090",
   "32",
   "32-step",
   "350",
   "360",
   "4-",
   "4.77",
   "4B",
   "5080",
   "5090",
   "600",
   "768-pixel",
   "8",
   "8.9",
   "9.6",
   "937",
   "95",
   "American",
   "Boost",
   "CORE",
   "Dynamic",
   "EVGA",
   "Edition",
   "FLUX.1",
   "FLUX.2",
   "FTW3",
   "Founders",
   "GB",
   "GPU",
   "GeForce",
   "J",
   "Laptop",
   "NVIDIA",
   "OC",
   "RTX",
   "Solid",
   "Ti",
   "Ultra",
   "W",
   "Z-Image-Turbo",
   "ZOTAC"
  ],
  "new_noun_tokens_withheld": 0,
  "figure_definition": "v3",
  "figure_boundary": "guarded",
  "drops": [
   {
    "kind": "bullet",
    "reason": "figure",
    "item": "a ZOTAC GeForce RTX 5080 Solid CORE OC 16 GB at 360 W draws 937 J",
    "detail": "terminal token not verbatim in the cited span"
   },
   {
    "kind": "bullet",
    "reason": "hand-edit",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 79,
    "text_sha": "7a762413e632",
    "figure": "150",
    "withheld": "one bullet removed from this pack by hand",
    "removed_utc": "2026-11-03",
    "why": "the page gives the laptop card under Dynamic Boost as 138 to 150 W over its grid cells and a flat 150 W on the recipe rows; 'ran under 150 W' turns that range into a ceiling the recipe rows reach, and says nothing of what a picture cost",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-11-03 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: the page gives the laptop card under Dynamic Boost as 138 to 150 W over its grid cells and a flat 150 W on the recipe rows; 'ran under 150 W' turns that range into a ceiling the recipe rows reach, and says nothing of what a picture cost. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
   },
   {
    "kind": "digest",
    "reason": "hand-edit",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 228,
    "text_sha": "01b4a73b86ec",
    "section": "the-arithmetic-once",
    "withheld": "one section digest removed from this pack by hand",
    "removed_utc": "2026-11-03",
    "why": "it drops what the worked picture is (one FLUX.2 [klein] 4B picture at 1024x1024 and 8 steps) and says 'one picture costs 4.77 cents a thousand': the page prints 0.004766 cents for the picture and 4.77 cents a thousand, the per-picture and per-thousand slip the check's F-1 cut",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-11-03 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: it drops what the worked picture is (one FLUX.2 [klein] 4B picture at 1024x1024 and 8 steps) and says 'one picture costs 4.77 cents a thousand': the page prints 0.004766 cents for the picture and 4.77 cents a thousand, the per-picture and per-thousand slip the check's F-1 cut. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
   },
   {
    "kind": "chip",
    "reason": "hand-edit",
    "item": null,
    "item_chars": 148,
    "text_sha": "548d0c5f56d3",
    "chip_id": "c-3260e299",
    "withheld": "one chip removed from this pack by hand",
    "removed_utc": "2026-11-03",
    "why": "it prints 150.04 cents a thousand with no card: the figure is the 12 GB Founders Edition card's paged cell at its stock 350 W, and the same picture reads 144.77 on a 24 GB card with the model whole and 133.25 on the 12 GB card held to 300 W",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-11-03 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: it prints 150.04 cents a thousand with no card: the figure is the 12 GB Founders Edition card's paged cell at its stock 350 W, and the same picture reads 144.77 on a 24 GB card with the model whole and 133.25 on the 12 GB card held to 300 W. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
   }
  ]
 },
 "generated_utc": "2026-11-03T00:33:45Z"
}