Bitcoin Forum

I was thinking about this for awhile guys and the one thing that is clearly a problem with mining is how power hungry mining rigs are 24/7 and how people who claim to be making a profit are usually nicking electricity from someone else, why isn't there a cheap renewable energy option out there? That would definitely be free and you wouldn't be spending your profits on electricity bills.

Just a thought I had really, sure it'd be difficult for people like me in the UK who would only get wind once in awhile, but what about in other areas where you're getting tons of heat and sunlight? Couldn't you just hook up a mining rig to a solar panel somehow?

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy

pretty much everything you need to know :P

Very interesting! Thanks!

setting up your own electricity "farm" isnt cheap tho.
i read somewhere about a guy that wanted to set up solar panels for his own home,
he got the entire neighborhood in on it and saved some on that.

but it will take a few years atleast til u acctualy "save" some money.

I have some solar in my home, but its not as simple as you think. You need batteries to run at night, and inverters, charge controllers, ect. I might run the new asic of solar, but i cant do the controlling computer.

I have a 1.5kW grid connected solar system at home. When I generate more thazn I can use I sell it to the grid @ AU$0.66kWh and when I draw more than I generate I buy it back at AU$0.25kWh. The system cost me ~AU$3k to have installed and will take about 4 years to break even.

I am currently building an 800Wp wind turbine which I will grid connect as well.

Renewable can be done but it is only cost effective were elec is very expensive. i.e. Australia is ~AU$0.25kWh were USA is ~AU$0.05kWh

here in norway solar and wind is pretty much useless, but if i had access to wave tech it would be awsome :)

Norway! Don't you guys run drainage pipes down the mountains to get some free hydro power?

what about Geothermal...if you have amountain range then it produces heaps of geothermal energy.

Australia is just starting the place geothermal plants along the Great Dividing Range, a mountain range that runs 85% up the full length of the east coast

that would be the big companys yeah, a normal person cant afford that, and even tho we have clean energy (mostly) here its friggin expensive.

4 years ago I was on vacation in Voss and the cottage we stayed in had ghetto hydro power:

A 10 cm black PE sewage pipe came down from a stream on the landowners property into his barn where he ran a centrifugal pump in reverse, i.e. as a turbine. It was connected to an AC motor, which worked as a generator. He had 3-4 KW free electricity for most of the year.

Fixed that for you.

hahaha norwegian redneck country

In reference to the OP, I definitely feel like there should be some community awareness of the consumption side of bitcoin mining. Whether it be investing directly in renewable sources for your energy, or indirectly assisting coalitions or whomever in getting states more active in utility-scale renewable farms.

Something to think about:

Approx 2,460kWh of energy is extracted from 1 TON of Coal.

Even the smallest mining operation is likely to utilize many multiples of that amount (a 500W system roughly every 3 months).
An off-the-cuff calc of the current network, averaging 65,000 5870s @ 180W a piece is ~12kW system, consuming ~8.5 GigaWattHours (8.5mil kWh) / month, or 3,420TONS of coal / 12,500 Barrels of Oil / 17,000 Barrels of liquified natural gas, every month. 

ASICs will be more efficient, but the amount to be deployed will still have a significant power draw, and as bitcoin increases in success, will continue to draw more.


So, just thought htis was a good location to throw out the good spirit of renewables, in helping offset our personal contribution to the detriment of the air :)

Now calculate how much energy and resources are consumed in the production of typical fiat.

I don't really have any easy access to resources that would provide numbers for such a thing, or I would certainly enjoy doing so. That aside, BTC supporters should be worried about what production of BTC causes and their direct contribution thereof, not the ratio of efficiency between two distinct systems. If I kill 1 person for fun, it's not ok to point at another dude who killed 10 and say "See what he did? So I'm ok."

Yeah, but this is different than killing people.  Currency is necessary.  It is necessary to consume resources in order to produce and maintain currency.  If we can utilize a currency that consumes fewer resources than the other existing solutions, how is that a bad thing?

Certainly, it is not a bad thing to continue working towards reducing that consumption (though personally, I couldn't care less how much electricity is being consumed), but anything better than what we already have should be celebrated, not demeaned.  JMO.

The point of the analogy is that destructiveness is destructive, regardless of the degree. The difference is of course that one is necessary while the other is not as you mentioned, but it does not negate the main point. If there is a path towards less, or no destructiveness, then one might argue that there is a moral imperative to approach it.

I did not say that BTC is a bad thing, I merely suggested that people be aware, and promote awareness in others of the community, that the system is certainly a consumer of resource, and that it would be beneficial to promote the solutions that are readily available. How is THAT a bad thing? Electricity consumption does not matter, the source of it certainly does.

so my 7.96GH/s (in my pants) is using 809kg of coal a month.

I'M FEEDING GINA RINEHART'S BIG FAT WALLET (and big fat belly).

I feel dirty now...  :'(

The two are basically unrelated...
If it's worth while to put in solar/wind then it's worth while to put them in regardless of what you're using the power for.

If it's worth while to mine then it's worth while to mine regardless of what the source of power is.

I've heard that energy costs in Iceland are dirt cheap and it is mostly renewable (hydro and geothermal). That's why all the aluminum smelters are there. I'm surprised that Iceland isn't a big BTC mining center.

Power is rarely so cut in dry as a per country basis.  I can colo for 4 cents per kilowatt hour my home I pay like 7-8 but there a people in the same state as me that pay like 30....

And aluminum smelters don't go where they can get cheap electricity that's the old fashion way... they go to where they can get favorable economic deals and then build their own power plants ;)

The glaciers and rivers of the interior of the country are harnessed to generate 80% of the country's electricity needs through hydropower, while the geothermal fields provide up to 20% of the country's electricity needs. These underground fields, which give tourists and locals their bathing pools, also provide Icelanders with an almost limitless and inexpensive supply of natural hot water.

There is no national grid in Iceland – harnessing the energy comes via the remarkably simple method of sticking a drill in the ground near one of the country's 600 hot spring areas, and using the steam that is released to turn the turbines and pump up water that is then piped to nearby settlements.

Geothermal water is used to heat around 90% of Iceland's homes, and keeps pavements and car parks snow-free in the winter. Hot water from the springs is cooled and pumped from boreholes that vary between 200 and 2,000m straight into the taps of nearby homes, negating the need for hot water heating. It's also purified and cooled to provide cold drinking water.

Wish we could all have it that nice :)

edit:
if you want the whole article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/22/renewableenergy.alternativeenergy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/22/renewableenergy.alternativeenergy)

Sorry if I'm repeating something already said I'm on my phone and it's hard to read over everything...

Renewable energy is very expensive in most cases (such as a GPU Miner) however very easy to do with newer technology like ASIC and even FPGA. Our ASIC Mining Contracts will be using both wind and solar as a matter of fact. Completely off the grid we will have a small wind turbine during the windy winter months and a small solar panel during the summer months. What makes things even easier is that our ASIC Miners use just 5VDC and we'll be using a modified Android device rather than a PC to run the mining software, which also uses 5VDC! That means no DC/AC conversion is necessary and we'll be able to run for days on a few batteries. If for some reason either were to fail we are setup so that our equipment will fail back over to the main grid but we wanted to give this a try and so far successful but the real test will come after all the ASICs are attached.

In the case of a GPU Miner, even just a single home PC you would require a much larger setup that would cost tens of thousands of dollars! The batteries alone would cost more than you could make in a lifetime with a single rig. You would be surprised at the enormous size of the UPS it took to run one rig for just 15 minutes! Luckily our data center has both battery and generator backups for power failure!

We don't have any of the solar/wind details up yet until ASICs are tested but if you wanted to check out our business and/or ASIC Mining Contracts here is our site... We're offering Contracts at just 0.25 BTC that give you nearly 125MH and with careful reinvestment will yield over 1GH within a year! Highest yields of any available and we're staying 100% private and confidential so that no one gets screwed like GLBSE!

http://www.progressivebtcmining.com/ (http://www.progressivebtcmining.com/)

See that makes no sense.
If you can provide renewable power for less then it costs to run it from the grid it doesn't matter how big your load is it would pay to run everything from it.  Especially when the cost per watt scales down the larger your setup is.

'Your' data center looks to be a bunch of random pictures you grabbed from the web :P

You either didn't read what I said or mis-interpreted what I was saying. The cost to convert DC to AC is much more expensive and you use a LOT more power to use a 1.5KWH PSU for a few GPUs (that's a huge understatement!)

Powering a bunch of ASIC Miners at only 1W per GH is not only more feasible but also uses DC so no conversion is necessary other than a cheap DC Regulator.

Not only is the turbine and solar panel a fraction of the Size and Cost, but there is no AC Conversion required which again is extremely expensive,  and the battery backup for times there is no wind or sun is absolutely nothing compared to what is needed to connect your entire home or business just to run a GPU Miner for 1-2GH at most!

We're just experimenting at this point anyways but it's just running a single circuit that only consumes DC power to begin with.

As for the pics, they were taken with permission by a colleague that is building our website. I never said it was "my data center"... Again, read and you'll see that the business is being run at the data center we work for. I'm a Network/RF Engineer and work out of one of the largest data centers in the Midwest.

Anyone interested in buying solar panels or wind turbines for BTC?? was looking a while ago into setting up a business for this... so just interested in peoples thoughts/interest

I don't think you've thought this through....

Any data center is already going to have a backup system to provide AC power as I assume you'd still want to be able to run all your network gear in the event of a power outage?  Or maybe you're fine running a miner with no network to talk to?  So the cost of adding a few 100 more watts of ASIC gear is going to be negligible...

But you purpose to run new wires for a DC distribution system straight to your equipment?  Maybe you're familiar with ohm's law?  A direct 12 volt line is going to need 10 to 20 times the current as your standard 120/240 AC to run the same load.  That means you're going to be needing to run some big wires to handle even a reasonable amount of equipment.  100 feet of 1 AWG is probably going to cost more than the solar panels need to run it.
I'm sure you're not the first to go 'hey.... these batteries are 12 volt and my computer needs 12 volt...' but there is a reason no one does it on a large scale.  The math just stops working.
I've seen proposals for such DC powered systems, but they're not something you just randomly add to an existing datacenter. They are carefully engineered high voltage DC systems that use double conversion UPS and are built from the ground up.


But that still doesn't do anything to refute my main point.
If you can put up solar panels to produce energy on a cheaper per kilowatt hour basis then you can get it from the grid then it shouldn't matter where the power goes... a few ASIC miners or stright into your main breaker.  Cheaper is cheaper and it would make sense to put up as many panels as possible because with very little expection the more panels you put up the more cost effective the system becomes.



And lose the taxes breaks??????? Never :P

Peter Schiff - The Treasury Is Complaining About the Cost to Print Money
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Pi89C_NBI

 ;D

I want to know if anyone has their op powered with solar or wind :p

So for the people that have invested in Solar: Did you buy the panels, or DIY? It seems that DIY panels can be had for a lot cheaper, but take a LOT of work.

I think you mean did you pay for professional installation of the system? No one DIYs a panel, you have to buy one, regardless of whether it is second-hand, B-grade, or whatever.

It certainly is a lot of work though, that's why the panels themselves are usually only about 50% of the cost of residential installation.

You can buy kits with A or B grade cells and solder interconnects. You pay 2$/watt that way.

You measure up the cells under a lamp to have similar current capable cells in same panel, then you solder and glue the cells on the backing. Put glass on top and seal airtight to prevent oxidation of the cells.

I don't really follow. $2 / watt is more than you would pay for a professionally put together finished panel. I'm not aware of solar cell wholesalers, so it's hard for me to check, but I've certainly been wrong before.

I suppose there is nothing really to prevent you from doing it your way, except material, time, tools and working space.

I mean buying something like this: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1472pcs-x-3-95Watt-B-grade-156mm-x-156mm-6-x-6-Poly-solar-cells/543644854.html

and manually soldering them all together, building/sealing enclosures, and wiring them up yourself.

$1500 for the panels, and I'm guessing ~$2500 for all the other materials (electrical, frames, glass, sealant, etc). About 4kUSD for ~5kwh of panels. My house sits at the top of a hill in Maine, and the back roof faces south and has almost continuous sunshine all day. It's ideal for solar, but I don't mind putting the man hours into lowering the initial investment and getting into it as cheap as I can.

Ah China, guess you can get everything from that whacky country these days.

Do you have enough space for all this? Not sure what your final power plan is, but these cells are rated at .613V, assuming you want 12V DC that's still ~20 cells in series, or 10' x 6" (you could make smaller panels and hook those up in series of course), 7kW (5000 kwh / month) of 12V power would require a huge number of 10'x6" strips. Unless you meant 5000 kwh / yr, which would definitely be more doable.

That's cheap, half price of cells bought in Europe. In my opinion one should get mono crystalline cells, 4-4.20 watts per cell. less soldering, less roof space used.

Are you including gov subsidiaries?

Please help me to find damnd block on my pool http://alvarez.sfek.kz  >:(

Umm you don't need to run a 20x1 cell grid just to get 20 panels all in series. You can do a 5x4 cell grid, and still keep them in series. This gives you about a 3'x4' panel, and I got plenty of space for 30-40 of such panels, between my house, and my 2 car garage next to the house (whose roof is facing south as well).

I've had sub 2 thousand watts orders of panels delivered to my house for under $1/watt, anybody who thinks they are going to build them cheaper than that is insane.  You can get solar laminates for $.64/watt right now and I've seen $.50/w in the past, which supposedly can be used without a frame. Or frame them, and still come out ahead of DIY panels

Yes, obviously you do not need to make it 20x1, nor would anyone do that. It was simply a simplest case example to explain sizing issues.

The real world scenario would actually be a > 12V cluster (closer to 15-17V for actual usage) of cells in your panel running in tandem with other modules through a charge controller into whatever system you're running off, such that all panels can work efficiently (same output for all series connections). The calculations are then done with Solar-Hours available to you, to garner expected kwh, but that's more than I cared to do in a simple forum post, so I left it to you to figure that out.

Edit: not sure why I originally read 5000kwh, must have been late. 5kwh is easy (even per day), basically no power at all. Can do that without using much of a fraction of your roof. You certainly don't need 1500 cells to do that.

Already have this sussed.... for FREEE

The local electricity company wanted to promote "green energy",  needed  'test sites'.

So I popped off a proposal about " The solution to conversion inefficiencies in green energy power storage solutions".

Well their PR & engineering departments are so worked up  it turned into  spunkfest.

Should have their engineers here on Thursday, I'm going to be doing a photo shoot.

Seems it *may* be more efficient to turn "waste" electricity into bit coins, than try to store it physically.

HC....

Sorry for the clarification, but the 1500 panels would be good for about 5kw, and living in Southern Maine, I'd get about 4-5 hours of peak sunlight per day. I'd be willing to call it ~20kwh per day.

And where are you ordering these? Please, do share. ;)

Yah I'd be interested to know as well...  I got mine for a bit under $2/watt and I've seen down to about $1.5/watt retail but sub $1 delivered?  I'd probably build out some capacity if I could get some of those ;)

Ah, you meant kW, your post originally said kWh, leading me down a rabbit hole. Well fair enough, assuming you have sufficient space for all these panels, 5kW seems reasonable. Most solar maps list maine at 3 - 3.5 hours though (yearly average).

Ya sorry for the confusion. One little letter can make a world of difference.  :o Yes we should get anywhere from 3-4 hours of peak sunlight, but as I said, we're at the top of a hill, with no trees in the way, and our roof is almost the perfect angle and direction.

No big secret, eBay. Sunelec.com also has good prices.

http://search.ebay.com/?sass=fred480v&ht=-1

Now there are some 275 watt panels for $.75/watt plus shipping, which seems to be the same no matter how many watts you buy, around $250 IIRC.  So 2000w delivered for around $1750, 10,000w for $7750.

All the prices you see from China , are actually bullshit high......

They actually pay less than 20 cents US for these cells, most of which are throwback defectives from the LED/outdoor lighting market.
Then you have the other fuckwhits, actually assembling the cells in shitty lighting factories ,so the quality is all over the place.
I have a friend who owns one of the biggest LED manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, he recently moved into  making solar cells and is just finishing off a new factory.

So everyone and his dog, fancies themselves as being solar lighting experts, whilst most are just a couple of blokes hand building this shite.

I just saw this company on CNBC which sells a stove that can charge up iphones and stuff, looks pretty experimental so far but I thought it looked interesting, Jim Cramer was all giddy about it lmao, don't like the guy very much but he does get it right occasionally for some reason.

http://biolitestove.com/

Which brand are you using?  I'd worry about the quality when something is suppose to last 25 years ;)


That's actually pretty cute.  But looks like it can supply only 2 watts.... which really is even less then usb's spec of 500ma.
So neat gimmick but nothing terribly amazing.

It says Peak 4W, continuous 2W, so... take as you will.

I wouldn't go heavily investing in them myself, they've taken the existing "high efficiency stove" which was developed as a give-away to help people in 3rd world countries be able to extend their fuel (wood) and lower their carbon emissions, and slapped on some sort of Thermal generator. Why I don't think that will make them take off, is that most 1st world campers, the ones able to afford $150 for a stove, do not cook using wood, they likely bring a controlled source like propane. The people who really need the extended wood-burning efficiency have absolutely no need for USB charging for iPods, nor can they really afford $150 for a stove that other organizations are trying to get funding to give away.

So I expect it to find some traction as a novelty but not as a serious product.

If you gasify your wood and then feed that into a engine running a generator you can get 1 kwh per kg of wood.  Plus 2kwh of heat split between the engine coolant and exhaust. 

If you have a supply of wood waste, or already heat with wood by just burning it, then you could get free power with some pretty simple DIY. 

I have a solar panel I hooked up to an old android phone which sits in the shed mining litecoins  :D

LOL I think I'm getting obsessive about Science now, I know fuck all about equations etc. but I find it really interesting, I wonder if it's possible to just experiment with this stuff through trial and error? Here's something I found on Thorium Liquid Fueled Reactors just now.

http://slowfacts.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/thorium-nuclear-reactors/

Imagine having one of these babies hooked up to a Bitcoin farm :D..... I think I could build that actually with my limited knowledge of welding... All I'd need is some Thorium.....

If you're capable of building your own home reactor - all issues aside - you've got better ways of earning money/bitcoins than by using that energy to mine, me thinks...

Never tried it before but it sounds like fun lol :P The problem with me is I have plenty of ideas I want to try but I need my own plot of land and a bit of cash to do it, so that's what I'm working on right now, trouble is that the coming depression is making things pretty difficult.

Lol Lethn, Thorium, same ball park as Uranium. Try to some of that on line. You'll get a personal delivery.

LMAO I'll get the Ministry of Defence visiting me if I try that :( :P

http://talesfromthenuclearage.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/david_hahn.jpg

Google nuclear boyscout before you try to build a reactor for your rigs.

Yeah that's the only trouble, how to deal with radiation, that stuffs pretty nasty so I'll take a lot of time thinking about that before I actually try anything, the thing is though, if the government are going to be obsessed with weaponry then who else is going to go after the stuff that isn't as harmful?