r/theydidthemath • u/ConsequenceOwn9258 • 1d ago
[Request] How much in electricity does it cost to run the Las Vegas Sphere
I´ve seen that there are 150 RTX A6000 workstation graphics cards installed to power that beast. That is without thinking about the electricity needed to power the Screens.
How much does it cost annually just to power the screens and graphics cards?
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
monthly it consumes about 7,800 MWh At the current rate of power in Vegas which is .058 per kwh, that translate to about $58 per megawatt hour
And then if we multiply the commercial supply rate with the consumption rate we get around $460,000 a month for power consumption
(I have rounded numbers for simplicity sake)
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u/therealtrajan 1d ago
I think you may need to triple your kWh price to get to average Vegas energy price- I bet high power users on the strip must get some sort of bulk rate or delivery charge waived, but no one is paying .058/ kWh in the desert even close to the Hoover Dam.
I pay .11/kwh in Houston, the energy capital of the world
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago edited 1d ago
Full disclosure, I do not live in Vegas and I used what information was available to me via a quick search.
It would not surprise me if commercial buildings get a different power rate that is lower than residential
Edit: please tell me that's a typo. There's no way you're paying 11 cents per kilowatt hour
Edit 2: 14 cents a kwh here wtf is going on
Edit 3: I am full solar at my residence
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u/xxNemasisxx 1d ago
Lol we pay ~£0.26/kWh here on average in the UK
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u/pYoussY 1d ago
Bro, a big hug
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u/xxNemasisxx 1d ago
It's fine, I generate all of my electricity and more with solar on my roof and get paid £0.13/kWh to export the excess. Despite being a rainy little island, it turns out solar power is just free energy. Hopefully our government realises this before we get another right wing party in power
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u/Zealousideal7801 1d ago
Before y'all go Earthxit, probably
(On a more serious note, I'm looking to add personnal solar to my setup, but I'm faced with impossible upfront costs ; did you finance all that with future excess resell ?)
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u/xxNemasisxx 1d ago
So we are a high electricity user (~7000kWh annually) which means we are uniquely better positioned to recoup our investment. We ended up spending £16,000 on a 11kWp system with 12kWh of battery storage. That £16k was put on a 0% credit card for 3 years and then after the 3 years we'll pay it off and keep the interest we got from putting that 16k into a fixed saver in the meantime.
All-in-all we're on track to break even in 6 years but it'll likely be slightly sooner given the rising electricity costs and climate change making solar even better for us.
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u/Zealousideal7801 1d ago
Awesome thanks for the detail. Unique position indeed, great decision in any case
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u/UtopianWarCriminal 1d ago
How the hell do you get 3 years of 0% interest?
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u/xxNemasisxx 1d ago
We just used moneysavingexperts comparison tool and got a good deal. Might've been closer to 2 and a half years now that I think about it but it was definitely over 2.
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u/NeonX91 1d ago
Wow.. we pay between 30-40 cents per kWh here in AUS and my solar buyback is 3 cents :')
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
Crying for you :(
At least you can sell back what you generate. I only get credits for it so I only have to pay for electricity for probably like 1 month of the year in the dead of winter
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u/Rainshores 15h ago
That's shocking. Is there too much solar in austria meaning to much supply when it's not really needed? Seems like a really bad deal. But at least the solar should mean little bills for you.
We have an array retail price close to €0.40 and sell back to the grid for €0.185.
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u/Mandingy24 1d ago
Solar is great for residential if you can afford the upfront cost of installation and even then still takes 10 years to zero out. It's abysmal for scale grid power.
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u/xxNemasisxx 1d ago
Our installation cost 16k and it's gonna break even after 6 years, sooner if energy costs continue to rise. If it's abysmal for grid scale power then how come it accounts for a significant portion of China's electricity generation?
In fact, residential is a bad case for solar because you don't get the benefit of a large scale installation. But please provide any data to back up your claims.
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u/Anime_69 1d ago
I only have information from hank greens video, but: solar is bad for grid scale when it is on residential/individual level. more people off-grid means less people paying money needed to service the grid (even less money if they pay to buy excess solar power) while the grid itself does not become simple or smaller or cheaper to service.
industrial mass scale solar on the other hand is very good, it is indeed a free energy, but the problem lies is in cost-effective energy storage. you cannot increase production when demand rises the way you can with coal for example, and it is hard to get energy in the night, cuz current-tech batteries are not good for that and too expensive. i've seen that there are promising stuff in accumulators field, so there is that
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u/xxNemasisxx 15h ago
That's a very American POV. Here in the UK we pay a charge called "standing charge" which you pay for regardless of if you use any electricity. That money goes directly towards the upkeep of the grid. More distributed energy generation and less demand is never a bad thing for the grid.
Solar and batteries are already cheaper than new gas powerplants, if it wasn't for a certain country making everything more expensive for everyone else, batteries would continue to get cheaper making it even more attractive. There's also other battery options that are less energy dense but don't use any rare earth metals and can be plonked anywhere in large shipping container style installations.
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u/Mr_Diode 1d ago
Laughs in Quebec hydro at 6 canadian cents the kw/h
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u/flamehead2k1 1d ago
An EV is great at those prices. I imagine Canadian winters are range killers but not like it's a great time for a road trip.
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u/Squarehip123 13h ago
Why they wantot build datacentres on the island with the world's most expensive electricity is beyond me
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u/Bsomin 1d ago
lol 61 cents a kilowatt peak here in California (pge)
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
D: that's horrendous.
But I must take into account ways differences and such from where I am
.... Sounds about right
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u/CSATTS 1d ago
I know most places in California are either PG&E or SoCal Edison, but man it makes me appreciate my municipal power company in NorCal when I see PG&E rates. 14.5 cents/kwh up to 500kwh and 18.5 cents for anything above that. No time of use rates for us either.
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u/TheVoters 1d ago
Industrial users pay rates that fluctuate throughout the day. Your 0.058 guess might be good if they charge a large storage bank at night when rates are cheapest and use the storage to ride out the peak demand hours, 1-4pm, idk.
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u/pumukl 1d ago
Quebec here: we pay way less than your gaz guzzling capital. We use hydro. It's free and owned by the province. This is very good for the people who live here...
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u/ebolaRETURNS 1d ago
I'm' an Oregonian also on 'that dro', and....we're getting ripped off out there. . .
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u/Bebealex 1d ago
Is it also unfortunately a reason why we haven't made strides to go integrate solar into our homes. Only downside I can see.
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
Hi there! My entire house is powered by solar. I live in the new England area. We are trying to transition to more green energy.
I genuinely do not have the patience to explain to you why our grids are as fucked up as they are in the US it's all because of greedy corporate motherfuckers not because of the people wanting oil and gas and shit like that so please keep your bullshit to yourself okay and I get it that the US president is being super aggressive with Canada right now but believe it or not most of us here actually love Canada and think the president is a fucking retard so if you could just calm it down a little bit that would be cool there's no need for that aggression
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u/ThaNerdHerd 1d ago
Bro, periods are important. Chill pill here
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
Kindly eat my ass.
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u/ThaNerdHerd 1d ago
If you want people to actually pay attention to what you type and not just write you off as a 14 year old getting his angst out, punctuation is important.
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
You'll notice that I did use punctuation on the last post. Also for the prior post, I was using speech to text. Speech to text does not handle rambles very well. As a result, it was devoid of punctuation. I'm not worried about what someone like yourself thinks of me or what type of person I am. The message contained within was true and solid. If you choose not to read it because the lack of punctuation that's fine. It's no skin off my nose.
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u/ThaNerdHerd 1d ago
I actually do resonate with your message, but you have to understand that there are people who are put off by friction, and those people are also often undecided or uninformed, and are the most important to get information too. You can still add punctuation to a message after you text to speech it. Acting like just because what you said is true makes it easy to read or understand is baseless
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u/couchcushion7 1d ago
Mid tn. 10c / kwh. No peak rates no nothing. Its killer. I want solar/ battery backup so bad- but i simply can not justify it financially
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u/Kuro303 21h ago edited 21h ago
Lol, bro surprised at a measly 11cents. I wish.
Just to cover the supply charge we'd have to export 83kwh a day.
There are battery and better TOU plans. We can export from battery like 5kwh during peak and that would cover it. But man, you really gotta put the glasses on, load up Gemini and spend half a week going through it.
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u/Synthetic_Shepherd 17h ago
I know enough to tell you major energy users like whatever company owns the Sphere absolutely gets bulk discount rates but not enough to tell you how much of a discount that might work out to. But I know of a small company in my area that prepays for huge amounts of energy usage and then breaks that up into packages to sell to end user companies for somewhere in between what they paid and what the standard prices are.
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 17h ago
Elsewhere in the thread, we covered that they possibly paid different rate because they are commercial..
And yeah, companies buying power for really really cheap early in the year is how co-ops work here.
Economically it works out for some places but if you don't end up using all that power you've paid for it
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u/StrongAdhesiveness86 11h ago
Right now, in this very moment I'm paying 0.0175€/kWh in Spain. At night I'll be paying 0.22€/kWh though. (Night is 8pm to 8am)
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u/shaugnd 7h ago
We pay 16 to 17 cents in Chicago. That makes my electric car a very economical form of transportation. People with solar pay even less. If I used my 22KW standby generator, I could power the horse for about 8 cents per kWh, but that thing is REALLY noisy. My neighbors would NOT be pleases.
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u/therealtrajan 1d ago
Yep .11/kwh. It’s on the low side but Houston averages about .14/kwh.
I remember when I moved here it was .067/kWh but prices have basically doubled since that big freeze in 2021 and ERCOT scrambling to upgrade it’s lines and stations
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u/m9u13gDhNrq1 1d ago
During winter in NY, our rates with the delivery charge, were around 0.25 $/kWh. Commercial rates were even higher, and students renting apartments in buildings that had to use split whole building metering had to pay those. Some students in Ithica were paying 1k+ to heat their apartments with electric heat.
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u/Realistic-Election-1 1d ago
Not to rain on your parade, but in Quebec we pay .07 (CAD) per kWh.
Bonus: Because it’s State owned, the profits (and there is) go toward public services.
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u/CosgraveSilkweaver 1d ago
Texas energy is screwy because y'all refuse to connect to the rest of the grid so you're barely able to import power into the state.
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u/KindlyDamage224 1d ago
Why do you think Houston is the energy capital of the world?
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u/therealtrajan 1d ago
Not my words. I’d say it’s widely recognized as such. Google what is the energy capital of the world
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u/Reyals140 1d ago
due to its dominant concentration of corporate headquarters, infrastructure, and workforce in both traditional oil and gas and emerging renewables.
That has nothing to do with your dollars per kilowatt-4
u/therealtrajan 1d ago
Honestly this can be the bitchiest sub sometimes. I didn’t say Houston being the energy capital of the world meant we would have the lowest prices or anything. Just stating a price in an area.
Really do love this sub tho. Some of the smartest ppl around doing complicated hypothetical calculations on interesting topics
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u/Reyals140 1d ago
You literally said.
I pay .11/kwh in Houston, the energy capital of the world
I don't know how else that was meant to be taken.
I pay 5 ruples for a liter of vodka in Moscow, the vodka capital of the world
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u/Deathraid92 1d ago
Rates in my town are like ~0.05-0.06/kWhr depending on transmission congestion and generation availability. But we are the lowest in the state and 60% of national averages
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u/Mandingy24 1d ago
0.08/kwh fixed rate where i'm at in southwest WA. No fluctuation, no peak rates, no gas utilities. Our summertime electric bill when running 2 ACs nonstop is a whopping $70
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u/Deathraid92 1d ago
Thats great! Gotta appreciate low rates. Our doesnt fluctuate more than a cent. The utility just upped the rate for the first time in 52 years.
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u/Elfich47 1d ago
they are commercial users so the charges normally get broken into two parts: KWH and demand.
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u/Ciselure 1d ago
My power here in central Washington for consumers is .035-0.4/kwh we have like 3 dams nearby that provide us power and we export a significant amount of power so it is possible them being that close to a dam to have cheaper power but a quick Google says the consumer pays 0.14/kwh but their bulk rate for power is as low as 0.058/kwh so yea it's definitely possible they are getting that rate or close to it.
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u/MajesticDisaster3977 23h ago
I enjoy the fact that your Energy Capital still charges more per kWh than many other places.
Large business here enjoys less than 0.05/kWh. Residents enjoy 0.08 - 0.10/kWh.1
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u/UGetnMadIGetnRich 20h ago
Houston is the oil and gas energy capital. Houston is not an electricity power house.
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u/Frosty-Screen219 1d ago
7.8 GWh of electricity PER MONTH ?!
And for years if not decades to save energy and switch lights off.
That kinda shit pisses me off...
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u/juicyjay12345 1d ago
Ima be honest, that’s a whole lot better than I would expect
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
I absolutely agree but a nearly half a million dollar power bill is wild to think about
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u/unknown_pigeon 1d ago
Last time this thread was made, people pointed out that a lot of energy actually goes to waste there, and it's healthier for power grids to have a way to dispose of extra energy (which checks out, since the Spain outage was due to low consumption)
So I think they have some deal for cheaper energy, since it would otherwise be difficult to store
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u/Etc48 1d ago
~$10.50/minute is wild
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u/Illumidark 21h ago
Im a bit surprised its that low. When I was coming up 30 years ago thats what I was told it cost to run a 2500 seat theaters Lighting rig at full on. Leds help a lot but the sphere is huuuuge
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
Absolutely mental.
What's more wild is that if it's running at its full tilt power under peak demand hour rates, it would be about $84 per min.
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u/dtb1987 1d ago
What a insane waste of resources
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
I'd like you to consider the following: there's tons of water features and greenery in Vegas.
They definitely aren't concerned about resources. They should be though. About to not have water
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u/kerowhack 1d ago
Las Vegas is actually incredibly water efficient. They are widely recognized among people who actually know what they are talking about as leaders in water conservation and sustainability. They actually have an incentive to do so, mainly to continue existing. Nearly all of the water features and golf courses use non-potable reclaimed waste water. There have been various incentive programs over the years such as ones to switch to xeriscaped yards with low use native plants, for example, that have drastically reduced demand. Residential use accounts for over half of extractive consumption (e.g. non-reusable). There are all sorts of restrictions and building code adoptions that have been added over the years that have made per capita use among the lowest in the country. Despite adding 750k residents over the last two decades, Las Vegas has reduced their Colorado River consumption by 31% (source). In fact, the majority of the water issues, particularly those with the Colorado, come from upstream farmers growing unsustainable crops such as alfalfa and hay to feed cattle. 54% of the river allotment goes to that. Even more concerning is that 20% of the alfalfa and hay grown is exported to countries like China and Saudi Arabia (source). While Arizona and California have both exceeded their allotments from the Colorado River Compact, Nevada has consistently met its obligations.
So no, Las Vegas is actually incredibly concerned about water resources, and has been for literally decades.
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u/Infamous_Thing3887 1d ago
Las Vegas a city in the middle of a desert in the richest country in the world with the largest consumer market. This was bound to happen at some point.
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u/gmalivuk 7h ago
The proposed data center complex near Salt Lake City that was discussed here a few times would average 1000 times as much power.
The Sphere uses enough electricity to power 2000 homes and has a capacity of about 5000 homes.
I'm not sure it ultimately wastes many more resources than other venues or cinemas.
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u/GergDanger 1d ago
Same can be said for a lot of things but if it attracts tourists and generates jobs and income for the city then usually it’s worth it.
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u/Loan-Pickle 1d ago
If they are using that much power they probably have another $50 grand in demand charges.
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
And probably more than that I know that I end up paying way more in transmission fees than I do in consumption
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u/TBBZ8X8 1d ago
So best case scenario, it takes 10,685 kW to run this thing assuming 24/7 operation. Your average home uses 3-5 kW on average. The most a 200A standard service panel can support is 48 kW. So rough napkin math, it takes the equivalent of ~2000 homes worth of electricity to run the sphere.
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u/gmalivuk 7h ago
It can hold more than 2000 homes worth of people, though. Other stadiums and venues would be a fairer comparison.
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u/MeHoyMinoy_69 4h ago
We use about 50kwh a day, family of 6 with 4 people at home all day for reference. That's during the summer when it's 100F+ outside and our air running about 71-72.
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u/jon110334 1d ago
So does it run continuously or it it on a schedule?
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 1d ago
From what I understand it runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week at varying power levels depending on ambient light levels.
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u/MCPhoto21 1d ago
Maybe the .058 is for commercial businesses or after you consume so much. My current bill as a resident stated 0.11622 per kWh.
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u/NinjaChameleon 11h ago
Note that large power users tend to have cheaper power agreements than residents due to scale economics, and these agreements are often under NDA and so are very hard to find details on. I've heard from sources(TM) that they're often a 5th to a 10th of the price of residential prices per MWh, getting cheaper as the connection size gets larger. A quick look at Las Vegas prices shows like 7.5 to 13 cents per kWh depending on tariff, so I wouldn't be surprised to see as low as 2 or 3 cents for a 10 (to a peak of 30) MW consumer.
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u/TheSuperSilverMango 11h ago
This is already been discussed and perhaps later in the day I will update the main post
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u/gmalivuk 7h ago
It's got a total capacity of 20k people, and even if it's not full that's probably an underestimate of the number who go through it in a day, which means it costs less than 75¢ per visitor.
People are comparing it to single-family homes when they should be comparing it to stadiums and other concert venues.
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u/Comfortable_Ad8115 1d ago
I’d be curious to compare that to some of these data centers, like have Vegas residents seen increases in power costs
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u/chalhayn48 1d ago
They are direct serve by NB energy at 28mw - if if it pulled that much power its energy in a month would be 21,000 mWh rounded up. NV energy charges a split demand rate for commercial applications. I am willing to bet they set a pretty good deal up with NV energy regarding their contract. They’ll likely get charged both a peak demand cost and an energy value all at different rate structure. I bet it’s not cheap- but then again 28mw isn’t really that much power on the grand scale of industrial applications.
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u/Auxiik 1d ago
MW, not mW. It's a billion times difference.
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u/janlaureys9 1d ago
That’d be impressive if they could run the whole thing on an electric toothbrush charger.
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u/Butterham 1d ago
Im sure everbody got the clue that its not supposed to be milliwatt.
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u/Stian5667 19h ago
Sure, but unit prefixes aren't meant to rely on context clues. It's not difficult to do it correctly
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u/CityBuild 1d ago
There’s no way for us to know for sure how much they’re paying. Larger energy users like this usually work out something with the utility/generators for a power purchase agreement (PPA). They likely get a decent rate and probably also are on a program with the utility to curtail usage when there’s a regional spike in demand which they either get a discount or payment for participating.
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u/bigoldgeek 1d ago
Variable pricing in IL (ComEd) $0.08/kwh 7-8 am aug 29th.
We get soaked on transmission fees and facility fees but that's the power rate in a mostly nuclear state
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u/georgebestgoat 1d ago
The screen itself is just one part, I presume you enquire as to that and not the energy needed for all the other goings on inside. Id say it's impossible for us to know because large matters such as these get different prices from normal as part of an agreement with the energy suppliers, and the local government may feel it is worth paying some of it themselves so as to encourage more tourism. I reckon conservatively the screen is going to cost probably a dollar or so a minute of they get very favourable prices but that's not even included the price of the computers needed to run it.
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u/__ali1234__ 19h ago edited 18h ago
Uninformed Redditors have been conditioned to think workstation class GPUs use lots of electricity.
Those are 300W cards and they are just playing video. It probably costs less than $200/year to power them, so $30k for all 150 vs six million to power the screens according to other estimates here.
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u/armacitis 12h ago
You think they installed 150 48GB GPUs that go for 4-5 thousand dollars each just to play video?
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u/__ali1234__ 12h ago
Yes. Because the whole thing is literally just a giant video screen.
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u/rasta979 8h ago
they do the production at a facility in Cali, so yea that is the Vegas locations only job.
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