A couple of years ago we toured Peter “CrazyDane” solar powered mining farm, and WOW is it so cool. With mining profitability continuing to decrease, especially as a residential crypto miner I am becoming more and more interested in rigging up some solar panels to my… rigs!
You can watch the video tour and interview of this solar powered crypto mining farm here
I found this Reddit post, and TLDR this was the summary in reference to mining with a Bitmain Antminer S9 on Solar Power and assume ~$1,500 for the S9 as opposed to the $50 you could get one for today lol
Anyway right now I’m researching some solar options, power requirements, and just what the current market looks like for acquiring gear and expected ROI or breakeven points really.
I considered this a good investment to any miners out there, I currently pay 14p kwh here in the UK, so in the summer months this really helps as the system produces 2 - 3.5 KW of free electricity on sunny day which has allowed me to grow my mining farm without the wife killing me over the electricity bill. (Around ÂŁ250 a month).
Everything i mine i keep, may of exchange for other coins but not sold anything. I pay the electric bill out of my wages each month.
I went for 4KW Solar System with company called Project Solar in April 2019 to offset some of electric costs in my mining operation. This is made up of 12x 330W Evolution Ultramax PLM-330MB066/D. Only expected to drop by 92% efficiency in first 12 years. This included an additional piece of equipment called a Volt Doctor, this reduce the Voltage in my house from 241V down to 220V which has optimises the amount of power that electric appliances uses.
This includes 48 hour repair response with dedicated customer care, an damage to roof over next 10 years is also covered by the Solar company. If a solar panel drop below its efficiency rating, engineer will attend and replace the effected panel free of charge, this is all monitored by another piece of equipment that linked to my internet connection.
My Investment to install the Solar System was ÂŁ10,600 for 25 years of generating renewable energy it was no brainer for me, sure on rainy days and only generating 500 - 1KW it hurts. Here in the UK there were incentives to go Green, the Government funds Solor producers in payments over time to reduce the cost of the solar system. This includes a feed back into the grid scheme which takes into consideration how much you generate from another meter, halfs the generation value and pays 5p per kwh which helps to recoup so of the costs of the system. This is good considering that they are considering only using half the energy that i produce, but like all miners nothing goes back into the grid at my house as i consume 3.5 - 4.0kw all the time.
I have 7kW on my house which offset electricity costs from mining by about half. Before I started mining, I was set to break even in 12 years (PA had pretty crummy SRECs, although it has improved), but I haven’t recalculated in awhile. When profitability is on the lower side, I auto shutdown my rigs at sunset and restart just after sunrise.
Having solar powered miner (panels 15KW) - solar covers app. 45% of power needed (currently 5,19kW)
investment (panels+frames+… imported directly from China / optimisers+inverter had to buy locally) - app. 12.000€/14.000USD
solar system payback app. 6,5 years in my case
If anybody needs additional info, just let me know. Currently seems good decision to me, but it will be an overkill after mining gone
Very nice, you even got the solaredge inverter in the pic. I am a utility-scale wind/solar meteorologist, so going solar on it’s own merits was enough for me; the mining came later.
Are you in a net-metering state? Hopefully you’ll get some extra benefits out of the panels once mining phases out… or maybe just get an electric car at that point
For anyone interested in a DIY solar assessment of their house / yard / etc, this is the best first step… A professional installer will make their first guess off of this freely govt tool, then depending on their level of sophistication, will do project specific calculations.
Two charts: Daily generation this month by day (63KW typical) and Yesterdays generation by hour.
My house faces North/South so the roofs of the A-frame are East/West. Sunlight hits the East Roof in the morning, both roof sides at noon, and lights up the West side in the afternoon. That explains the sinusoidal looking generation. Doesn’t cover all my electrical needs and I signed up before they passed any pay me half for my power. I get dollar for dollar on my generation. My mining uses up most of my power in the summer due to air conditioning costs. November thru June are great. This is in Southern Arizona.
I generated 1751 KWH in May, and 1106 KWH so far this June with nearly half a month to go.
You can see the effect a cloudy day has on solar power, look at June 5th. Clouds hurt.
everyone likes to show their early summer solar performance, but no one shares the rest of the year.
anyone wonder why? because Sept to Apr solar output sucks during these months. in July i got a peak of 55kw for a day, but my average is far less 36kw per day, fall, winter and spring months is far less, Sept for example got me 33 kw peak and a daily average of 19 kw. Fyi: I’m using 30 kw/per day just for lights, hvac and misc and no mining, with mining, 5 asics bump my daily consumption to 100 kw. These figures from my place in Seattle which is not an optimum area for solar because of rain and heavy clouds. But you play the cards you got. Nothing wrong with solar but depending on your location you might be chasing a fantasy dream of becoming utility free while running a mining operation. The fact is while 41 panels may seem like a lot in reality it’s 1/3 of what i’ll need to make my mining operation more utility independent, so 80 more panels, yikes where do i put them all? double yikes apx $40,000 to pay for it all. another 5 year project coming
I just wish I had that kind of production in November to june 