The Electricity Consumption of a Bitcoin & Lightning Node

Wondering how much electricity your Bitcoin and Lightning Network node uses?

After we shared our article on the profitability of a Lightning node, one bitcoiner wondered whether its electricity consumption had been taken into account.

So here is a new article in which we calculate the annual cost of running a Raspberry Pi with Umbrel!

1. Different hardware from Bitcoin mining:

Unlike mining, running a node does not require computing power. Our goal is not to compete to create a new block, but to record and relay these blocks.

While miners buy ASICs, a simple Raspberry Pi is enough for what we do. In theory, we could run our node on a desktop computer or a mobile phone. However, that is not the preferred solution, since we need more than 500 GB of storage and a permanent connection to the network.

To dedicate hardware to this task, we chose a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8 GB of RAM, paired with a 1 TB SSD. This setup is compact and affordable, at around €200. We will then install Umbrel by following this tutorial:

2. How much electricity does a Bitcoin node on Umbrel use?

A) The theoretical consumption of a Raspberry Pi:

The Picockpit.com website offers a tool for estimating a Raspberry Pi’s electricity consumption.

Here are the parameters to use in the calculation:

• 1 x Raspberry Pi 4, 8 GB,
• 1 x 1 TB SSD,
• 1 x fan,
• €0.1740 per kWh (average price in France in April 2022)

According to the tool, our node would use 46.87 kWh per year, costing €8.16 per year.

B) The actual consumption of an Umbrel node:

Marc Valée conducted the real-world test. He used a digital power meter connected to his Raspberry Pi running Umbrel. The test was carried out on his new Lightning node, with no channels open. He estimates that a Bitcoin node on Umbrel uses 37.5 kWh per year, or €6.50 per year.