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 "slug": "what-it-costs-to-run",
 "title": "What it costs to run a high-end AI rig at home",
 "dek": "What it costs in electricity to run AI models at home, read off a meter on every one of a small workshop's computers: the box with graphics cards that now runs around the clock, about 130 W doing nothing, a measured week, what one picture, one answer and one mini PC cost, and what the meter cannot see.",
 "published": "2026-10-06",
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 "licence": "CC BY 4.0",
 "status": "pending-judge",
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  "url": "https://research.strata2signal.com/what-it-costs-to-run/",
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  "paragraph": "this page is what it costs in electricity to run AI models - pictures, answers, music - on a small workshop's own computers at home, read off a meter on every one of them. The one box with graphics cards that now runs around the clock drew about 130 W doing nothing over 2026-10-04 (UTC), about $17 a month at the average U.S. price (since 2026-10-05 it has read about fifteen watts higher, cause not yet found). Everything together, the work and the test runs included, averaged 76 cents a day over the measured week 2026-09-28 → 2026-10-04 (UTC), about $23 a month, about a seventh of an average American home's electricity. One answer costs about six thousandths of a cent, and a mini PC with no graphics card runs the same kind of model for about $1.44 a month. Here is the meter, and what it cannot see.",
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    "quote": "Doing nothing, it drew about 130 W: the median of 1,335 readings over 2026-10-04 00:00 UTC → 2026-10-05 00:00 UTC was 128 W, and 128 W again over 2026-10-03 from 03:39 UTC, the oldest reading the collecting laptop still held when this was re-read at 00:36 UTC on 2026-10-06.",
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   "digest": "power is measured at the output of each box's battery backup unit. the ledger records readings once a minute, ensuring gaps are not filled and switched-off boxes are recorded as nothing known.",
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   "digest": "specific tasks are priced by their energy draw. a picture takes about 1.87 watt-hours at the meter, an answer costs about 0.35 at the meter, and a thirty-second beat costs 0.66 at the meter.",
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   "digest": "the meter does not account for model training, card manufacture, rented machines, the game, water, carbon, the backup units' own electronics, the network, or the room's temperature.",
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   "digest": "the article provides a detailed table of measurements, including the answer box idling at a 128 W median and the mini PC drawing below the meter's 27 W floor.",
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   "digest": "the workshop uses a meter to show that running local models is a measurable cost. a follow-up will investigate heating the house with GPUs later this winter.",
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 "chips": [
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   "id": "c-ebcb352d",
   "q": "how much electricity does the workshop use compared to a home?",
   "a": "The workshop shelf, as it currently stands, would add about a seventh to an average home's electricity. The shelf averaged 172 W across seven days, whereas the average home draws about 1,230 W around the clock.",
   "cites": [
    "the-bill-in-dollars-before-anything-else"
   ],
   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
   "quote": "",
   "quote_cite": ""
  },
  {
   "id": "c-02c645f1",
   "q": "what purpose does the meter serve for the workshop?",
   "a": "The meter provides evidence of electricity usage to show that running small public services does not necessarily require massive cloud-based infrastructure. It serves to demonstrate the actual energy footprint of the workshop's local operations.",
   "cites": [
    "why-this-page-exists"
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   "published": false,
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  {
   "id": "c-30c84780",
   "q": "how are requests routed to the local machines?",
   "a": "A phone communicates with a rented web server, which then passes words over an encrypted link to the computers in the room. Requests are routed to the answer box or through a mini PC that holds a small program for routing.",
   "cites": [
    "what-local-means-said-at-a-kitchen-table"
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   "published": false,
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  {
   "id": "c-05d6c8bc",
   "q": "how does the ledger handle gaps in power readings?",
   "a": "The ledger treats a gap in readings as a gap and never fills it in. It also ensures that a day's total is never scaled up from partial coverage and that a switched-off box is recorded as nothing known rather than zero.",
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   "q": "how much energy is used by the graphics cards during a busy day?",
   "a": "On a clean day when all four boxes were awake, 53% of the 7.30 kilowatt-hours drawn came from the five graphics cards inside the metered boxes. When accounting for power supply losses, the cards' true share is nearer 59%.",
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    "one-clean-day"
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   "publish_state": "held",
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  {
   "id": "c-4028bfab",
   "q": "what does the workshop plan to investigate regarding heat?",
   "a": "The workshop plans to conduct a follow-up to see if heating the house with GPUs is effective. This will involve measuring how much of the total house heat comes from the computers versus the heating system itself.",
   "cites": [
    "what-to-take-with-you"
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   "published": false,
   "publish_state": "held",
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 "related": [
  {
   "slug": "electricity-per-million-tokens",
   "why": "shares ground with § Numbers, so it isn't just talk · § What is being counted, and at what price"
  },
  {
   "slug": "two-used-3080s-priced",
   "why": "shares ground with § Numbers, so it isn't just talk · § What this page does not measure"
  },
  {
   "slug": "electricity-per-image",
   "why": "shares ground with § What one thing costs · § Steps, pixels and the model"
  }
 ],
 "thanks": "## Who ran this, and thanks {#who-ran-this-and-thanks}\n\nAn operator ruled the caps, switched the second box off and on and off again with the weather, and cleaned the fans; the agents wrote the ledger, pulled the benches, and drafted this page, which an operator reads once before it goes out. The meter is each box's battery backup unit, read through **Network UPS Tools** (GPL-2.0-or-later); each card reports its own draw through NVIDIA's **nvidia-smi**, the tool that ships with its driver; the ledger that banks them is our own and is not published with this page. The pictures were made by **FLUX.2 klein 4B** (Black Forest Labs, Apache-2.0) through **ComfyUI** (GPL-3.0) on **PyTorch** (BSD-3-Clause); the words a stranger types are read by **Mistral Small 3.2** (Mistral AI, Apache-2.0) and the kept picture by **Gemma 4** (Google DeepMind, Apache-2.0), both served by **Ollama** (MIT); the rules desk's answers and the mini's writing come from **Gemma 4** at 26 billion parameters, served by Ollama; the beats come from **ACE-Step 1.5** (its weights MIT by their model card, its code Apache-2.0 by its repository's licence file, both read 2026-10-06); the tour guide's model on the day its question was timed is not in that bench's record, so it is not named here. Thanks to the people who wrote them, and to the makers of the 2020 cards that made most of September's pictures. The ledger's day files and the bench rows were checked and signed by the humans in the workshop. None of these projects owed us anything.",
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    "item": "The meter reads watts, but the cost to the air depends on the specific grid used. The article uses a round mixed-grid figure of about 400 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour, but the specific gr",
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    "why": "Not a measured figure: 3090 is a card's model number, so the line receipts nothing the page measured. It also drops the condition the page gives: the bench box's cards change with the bench; it held two RTX 3090s in September and one RTX 3090 through the week this page reads.",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-10-07 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: Not a measured figure: 3090 is a card's model number, so the line receipts nothing the page measured. It also drops the condition the page gives: the bench box's cards change with the bench; it held two RTX 3090s in September and one RTX 3090 through the week this page reads. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
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    "section": "the-bill-in-dollars-before-anything-else",
    "withheld": "one section digest removed from this pack by hand",
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    "why": "False as written: it says the workshop's bill is calculated at 18.31 cents a kilowatt-hour, where the page converts its watt-hours to money at that national average for July 2026 and says the rate is not the workshop's bill. It also drops the page's caveat that the $23 month is arithmetic from seven measured days, not a measured month.",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-10-07 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: False as written: it says the workshop's bill is calculated at 18.31 cents a kilowatt-hour, where the page converts its watt-hours to money at that national average for July 2026 and says the rate is not the workshop's bill. It also drops the page's caveat that the $23 month is arithmetic from seven measured days, not a measured month. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
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    "why": "Drops the condition: the roughly 270 W is what the four boxes drew together doing nothing, on 2026-09-09 (UTC), the last clean day all four were awake, and the page calls it a floor by the second box's caveat. As written it reads as their whole draw through September; the second box was switched off on 2026-09-11.",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-10-07 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: Drops the condition: the roughly 270 W is what the four boxes drew together doing nothing, on 2026-09-09 (UTC), the last clean day all four were awake, and the page calls it a floor by the second box's caveat. As written it reads as their whole draw through September; the second box was switched off on 2026-09-11. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
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    "withheld": "one section digest removed from this pack by hand",
    "removed_utc": "2026-10-07",
    "why": "Puts the wrong ratio on the day: the page reads 2026-09-09 (UTC), and the eleven times belongs to the three clean days 2026-09-12 to 2026-09-14 (UTC) with three boxes awake; the page says the busier days with every box awake, 2026-09-09 among them, said eight.",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-10-07 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: Puts the wrong ratio on the day: the page reads 2026-09-09 (UTC), and the eleven times belongs to the three clean days 2026-09-12 to 2026-09-14 (UTC) with three boxes awake; the page says the busier days with every box awake, 2026-09-09 among them, said eight. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
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    "section": "the-part-about-jobs",
    "withheld": "one section digest removed from this pack by hand",
    "removed_utc": "2026-10-07",
    "why": "Misreads the page's argument: it splits the products into new things and models trained on work nobody asked the artists for. The page says the model under the print lab, the new thing, was itself trained on that work, and sets the lab against the six worlds painted large, which somebody could have been paid to paint.",
    "detail": "removed from this pack by hand on 2026-10-07 (UTC), after the writer ran and after the gates had counted: Misreads the page's argument: it splits the products into new things and models trained on work nobody asked the artists for. The page says the model under the print lab, the new thing, was itself trained on that work, and sets the lab against the six worlds painted large, which somebody could have been paid to paint. Not a gate drop, and recorded here so the ledger adds up."
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 "generated_utc": "2026-10-06T23:56:19Z"
}