What electricity from your own panels really costs you
Surplus solar power is worth what you would get for it elsewhere. If it would go into the grid, its “price” is the feed-in tariff. If you could use it at home, it is the full price of grid electricity. Only surplus that you would neither sell nor use is truly worth zero.
Feed-in prices for surplus from home solar plants are low. According to a comparison by Ušetřeno.cz (as of 15 January 2026), suppliers offer roughly 200–1,050 Kč/MWh, i.e. 0.2–1.05 Kč/kWh, often only to their own customers and sometimes with a monthly fee. With spot-based buy-back, the trader's fee is also deducted from the exchange price – 350 Kč/MWh at ČEZ. In practice, therefore, reckon with the lower end, around 0.2 Kč/kWh – and that is still a good price.
And the spot price at midday tends to be low. From January to September 2026 the Czech Republic had 278 hours with a negative electricity price, most of them in April (94), May (64) and June (47). In the first five months of 2026, Czech solar plants generated 17.7% of their electricity during hours with a negative price and almost another 6% at a zero price.
In addition, since February 2024 solar plants subsidised under the Nová zelená úsporám programme have been subject to an export limit of 50% of installed capacity. Whatever you don't consume above the limit is lost – and it is exactly this energy that is truly free for a miner.
In what order to use your surplus
- Your own consumption – washing machine, dishwasher, charging the car at midday. You save the full grid price.
- Battery and water heating – you use the energy in the evening or in the boiler, with small losses.
- Miner – once the battery is full and the water is hot, it earns more from a kWh than the feed-in tariff would.
- Export to the grid – whatever is left.
So don't power a miner from the battery at night. A kilowatt-hour in the battery replaces a purchase from the grid in the evening; in a miner it would earn only a fraction of that.
Winter: a miner as an electric heater that mines as well
A miner doesn't use up electricity “for good”. Everything it draws from the socket ends up as heat in the room – just like a panel heater or an electric boiler. A miner drawing 800 W heats like an 800 W convector, no more and no less.
In winter, however, solar panels produce only a small part of their summer output, and the miner will run mainly on grid power. It pays off where you would heat with electricity anyway: panel heaters, storage heaters, an electric boiler, extra heating for a study or keeping a workshop frost-free. You pay the same for the heat as with an electric heater, and the mining income comes on top.
If you heat with a heat pump or gas, a miner won't produce cheaper heat. You can find a calculation of the heat cost for a whole heating season in the article Heating with an ASIC miner.
Electric heater, miner or heat pump
| Electric heater, electric boiler | ASIC miner | Heat pump | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heat from 1 kWh of electricity | ≈ 1 kWh | ≈ 1 kWh | ≈ 3–4 kWh (coefficient of performance, COP) |
| Extra income | none | yes, depending on network difficulty and the exchange rate – see the calculator above | none |
| Use of summer solar surplus | only with water heating | yes, controlled by the export flow | water heating, cooling |
| Noise | silent | depends on the machine; home models around 33–55 dB | outdoor unit |
| Control | thermostat | smart plug, power diverter, thermostat; takes a few minutes to start up | own control system |
| When it makes sense | as a cheap investment where little heating is needed | instead of an electric heater and for solar surplus | heating a whole house at the lowest heat cost |
According to the manufacturer Bosch, the coefficient of performance of air-to-water heat pumps is 3.4–4.1 under laboratory conditions and tends to be lower over a whole season. A miner's earnings change with network difficulty and the exchange rate.
To sum up honestly: a heat pump gets the most heat out of a kilowatt-hour and a miner can't beat it. Against an electric heater, however, the miner wins – for the same electricity it gives the same heat plus income.
From our consultations
- Customers with solar panels often put the miner in the utility room next to the batteries. In winter its heat keeps them at a comfortable temperature.
- A smart plug or a remotely controlled circuit breaker usually works best: it switches the miner off as soon as the surplus ends, and you can monitor everything on your phone.
- Size the miner according to the typical surplus on a sunny day, not the peak output of the plant. A machine that the surplus can't cover will draw the rest from the grid.
- Large 3–5 kW ASICs are too power-hungry and noisy for a typical home solar plant. The exception is hydro machines connected to the heating system – but they make sense mainly in winter.
Sources
- oEnergetice.cz (13 Oct 2026): number of negative-price hours in the Czech Republic, January–September 2026
- oEnergetice.cz (4 Jun 2026): share of solar output in negative- and zero-price hours
- OTE (7 Jul 2026): trading and negative prices in H1 2026
- Ušetřeno.cz (15 Jan 2026): suppliers' feed-in prices for surplus power
- oEnergetice.cz: export limit of 50% of capacity for subsidised solar plants
- Bosch: coefficient of performance (COP) and seasonal COP of heat pumps



