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I'm looking into setting up a GPU farm. Please hold off on the criticism and death threats, I've already made up my mind. My only obstacle is finding a place with very cheap electric rates as I will be pulling some serious wattage, think upwards of 1000 kwh / day. I've heard of electric rates being as low at $.0065 near hydro electric dams, however I can't find much online. If anyone points me in the direction to find such cheap electric rates at a reasonable locale I will give them a bounty of .5 BTC, but any other help is encouraged as well :)

In MN you have two advantages. 0.05 Kwh and half the year is cold enough to keep the GPUs cool
I'm sure there are cheaper places, but 0.05 it's not bad!

Move to an all bills paid apartment, install racks/gpus, profit!

I believe you're thinking small here....
Notice he said "bitcoin farm". If you move to an all paid apartment, it wouldn't be long until the landlords realize you're spending $2000 dollars a month in electricity and evict your ass out of there. (there are always ways for that no matter how pretty your lease contract looks like)

I don't get, why can't you rent an apartment with electricity included and mine the shit out of it.

SOMEONE is paying that bill dude... the landlords forecast a "normal" use of electric power. If I mine with one or two rigs it shouldn't be a big deal, if I make a datacencer out my apartment and I fill it up with rigs and I spent an insane amount of power, they will notice. Again, the OP stated he wants a mining farm. By that I understand a considerable amount of mining rigs. He's looking for geographical places so I don't think he's intending to just mine with 4 or 5 rigs only.
I could be wrong, but I hope you understand my point. I think you are thinking in small terms.

Niagara Falls, NY has power as low as $0.0314/kWh, according to https://www.viridian.com (https://www.viridian.com)

For reference, I used a zip code of 14301.

National grid may be lower, as it appears viridian specializes in green power (which tends to be more expensive).

In Buenos Aires it's 0,07 dollar kWh, but the goverment helps to pay for it (to everybody) and the final price is: 0,0088 kWh.
Anyway, I'm sure you are not coming to BsAs  :)

how can be electrical power so much cheap??? in europe you pay like 0,25 eur / kWh  >:(

Then again, you need to buy the GPUs overseas and entering them to Argentina... good luck!
And then make sure you don't get robbed, kidnapped, assaulted, or the government decides to pull some trick to prevent computers to connect to the bitcoin network (unlikely) but with that president, you never know...!

Don't bother looking in England or the UK in general, it's expensive as hell here.
I'm know you didn't ask for that, but you can tick it off your list.

You are right, places near hydro dams do get really cheap electricity, sadly the only friend who could help with quotes in that example, lives in Las vegas and building a mining farm there would be silly. Far too hot, so you'd just end up spending more money on cooling.

I have heard very good rates in a few select places in Europe, Norway especially, it's so cold so they don't really have to worry about cooling and they have hydro dams up there. Could ask a contact out there if you really interested. Only problem is I'm not very fluent in the language.

BTW, at these prices, I'm paying $60 per month on 4 Ghash/s
So GPU is VERY profitable if you own the equipment already
฿9.13/Month or $819.24 at current prices/difficulty

I currently mine my 1 GPU unit from the luxury of an apartment with included power, but Niagara Falls/Buffalo is getting that hydroelectric power that you are looking for. I don't think that there is anything wrong with 3.14 cents/kWh.

deatcode has got the idea. I know that an 'all inclusive utilities' fee will not cover the amount of power I am requiring, I'm going to have to pay for it some how. Also, there is an issue of getting that much power in the first place, as it will have to be a specialized circuit. I can't just plug these into the walls of any old place and run them. I'm looking into renting a space in a data center. As far as the .0065 figure, it was something I head once in a conversation, so it might not be realistic. Running the numbers I am comfortable paying .05, though less is always more. I couldn't just rent some place near Niagra, it would have to be able to provide me with the massive amount of wattage I need, but I will look into the location at .03~ sounds very, very appealing.

The .5 BTC bounty stands to anyone who points me in the cheapest direction and I happen to follow through with it. My plan should flesh-out in the next few weeks and once I sign the lease I will be sure to reward you.


Yes, I am very willing to explore all options (though I will let Argentina slide this time  ;D) and would be grateful if you would follow through and get me in touch with your contacts.

Keep in mind the rates I gave you for MN are residential.
You might be looking at business rates if you consume more than a certain amount of energy.
As far as renting rack space in a datacenter. Datacenters are very reluctant to allow BTC miners due to the amount of power they drain and I can assure you they will ask what are you co-locating in their racks as they forecast power consumption per sq/ft and other analytics.
So keep those two things in mind.

Interesting. I've started reaching out to data centers but I'm not sure how I'm going to explain what I'm doing... protein folding  ???? But I will be very up front with the amount of electricity I am going to consume. I haven't got any numbers from them yet but it i definitely an avenue I am interested in exploring as they will be able to house and provide electricity for my farm, provided they are willing to do so and the $/kwh works out. One center I'm looking at also has 'white space' available, which is empty floor space where I set up the farm myself without their racks.

Set it up in Venezuela. Electricity isn't necessarily cheap, but gas is almost nothing. You'd need a pretty large generator, but I think I paid $0.25 USD for a 10 gallon tank of gas in 2010, and it's cheaper now than it was then.

I'm getting investors in on this. I have a hard enough time relating the concept to them, and taking their capital to Venezuela would call for an incredibly sly pitch on my part. And keep in mind most Americans don't like Venezuela (save, of course, when they pull into a Valero to fill up). But it is definitely interesting and I'd like to see the math on that. I'm not sure how fast an industrial generator would go through 1 gallon of gas.

It would be a logistics nightmare plus not to mentions you'll have to export the technology to Venezuela because I'm sure GPUs are way more expensive there... to start...how many GPUs / GHash are we talking about here?

My minimum setup is 30 rigs of 4x7950 each. As the marginal cost for each additional rig is $0 (just a linear increase of electricity), I hope to have many, many more. I'll probably create a thread about my plan after I vet it out with some business dudes in the next week or so and get rid of my noob-status.

 You need to determine the wattage you'll need, the kWh consumption, the cooling requirements (natural/artificial and winter/summer) the amount of phases you'll need (no idea about amperage and how much each phase supports).
Also, difficulty increase overtime, forecasting in the BTC value (those last two factors are an unknown) and ultimately, ROI and profit.

I've already done all that and my last big hurdle is the electricity. With my planned minimum setup, I will be pulling a very liberal 1000 kwh/day.

I think our president support bitcoin, she hates banks.  :) It's sad to see the bad publicity the countries under protectionism economies countries have on the world.  :-\

Anyway, you you are right, the hardware here is very very expensive.

Argentineans (including the president) love dollars and pesos are worth $0.
I'm not sure how much love the president will have for bitcoins if Argentineans find a way to buy bitcoins or mine them to get dollars in the black market (yes, not the blue market) meaning mining them and exchange them for dollars overseas and getting them into the country, or buying bitcoins with pesos (highly unlikely overseas) but anyways this is not a conversation about the economy there.

Mantis, my contact advised a few things. Try and find a Datacenter located in the south on Norway, like Oslo, electricity prices are a bit cheaper there. Many of the Datacenters really don't care how much electricity you use, some are bold enough to say free and/or include a lot. They charge more by their extra's like bandwidth, backup's and space it takes up.
Optimise for space, fit as many GPU's into a server sized rack unit as you can. Trust me, they aren't going to over heat.

Think the equivalent price in Norway for electricity would be 2.5 - 3 cents/kWh. So it's cheap and cold there. But being a Datacenter you mostly paying for the space and having it looked after.

Not many places have prices online, so shopping around takes a while (ie. sending emails for quotes).
Serve the world (in Oslo, Norway) does have their prices online. So they likely not be the cheapest.
http://servetheworld.net/produkter/co-location-server-rack

A full rack, which can handle in the region of 3000+ Watts. (enough space for ~10 servers - full of GPU's)
That would be $2000-3000 a month if I understand the table right.

However there is a lot of things included you just don't need. I know extra feeds and power is pretty cheap so if all you need is a basic setup inside, you could tell them that and they might consider reducing the price a lot.

He says there is a lot of Datacenters in Oslo, so if you want good price for a cabinet or full rack, and all you need is a basic connection and cheap electricity, your best bet is to send them an email for a quote.

Goodluck, if I had a larger client base in Europe, as a server admin, I'd so use them. A lot cheaper than anything else I'd have to consider.

I'm thinking Ocean Falls BC.

They have an underused hydroelectric plant run by a small company looking for commercial users of the power. The town is mostly empty buildings that could be had for next to nothing.

It's isolated, but the internet connects us all and who wouldn't want to live in such a (wet) paradise.

I'm currently buying bitcoin with LR for less than gox price - no fees!

fully automatic exchange:
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I'm starting to become pretty set that I'm going to open shop in a data center as they have the security, electricity needs, and housing for what I need. I've been looking into Fortune Data Centers.

+1  Uni residences, heating all day to the point you need to open the windows in winter and all the mining you want (which makes more heat more windows open)

I live in Syracuse NY, electric prices through Solvay electric (Solvay is a town/suburb of Syracuse) are 3 cents per kwh (link for proof: http://www.nypa.gov/partners/solvay.htm bottom of page).

National grid/nimo sucks, they are 3x/4x as expensive.

Cheap electricity and the sudden rise in bitcoin prices (sure they might go down...but they'll go back up assuredly) are why I'm here.

Good luck finding a place!

Good for you!  The market is demanding more Scrypt power than the available supply.

Also take the climate and politics into account.  You want to be somewhere cold as hell, but with good internet and stable government.

Take a look at Quebec and BC.  Their gold mines get cheap power, plus it's freezing most of the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Canada

The socialists in Quebec might even give you a grant to bring some jobs (LOL  :D).

And you could charge for the heat you generate, or donate it to a school/orphanage/old folks' home.   ;D

Thanks, I'm looking into Solvay due to your suggestion and will be getting in touch with the electric department by the end of the day. A problem I'm looking at though is the raw power consumption... I will need a facility that can provide far more than your average circuit... that's why I'm looking into data centers. If I could somehow work out an arrangement with the power company that would be amazing but I know not much of these types of proceedings.

Here in Quebec it's 0.03 cent per KWH :)

Need any info/help around the Solvay area feel free to ask, even without the .5 BTC it'd be interesting to glance around your server farm and see what you've got set up.

There's enough big buildings/factories in the Solvay area to figure that your MW demand shouldn't disturb anything. If you ask them of any buildings around here that are vacant but have enough wires dropped to satisfy your demands they might be able to help, off the top of my head I can't think of anything that's for sale besides some random houses/apartments that are around. Unless you buy a house and hire an electrician to drop in some more wire they won't be much help though haha.

Steal it

100 kilowatts? Did I read correctly? It is like electric train accelerating.

I know, it's funny. Perhaps he needs 100 kw/hr per month, not 100 kW

Not all of us are power engineers. Well, I am, but the rest of you guys are probably not.

I called the Solvay Electric Department today and was given direction about open real estate that is able to put up with those power needs, so I'm going to follow through with that. Any help you could give me would be great, it's actually looking like a promising spot due to the dirt cheap electricity and the fact that most data centers have minimum power requirements (80 KW/month!) that far exceed my current budget.


I mean 1000 kWh/day, which translates to about 8 KW/month. I had a funny mix up on the phone about that today where this guy thought I was going to power a small city.

my brother wants to set up a small mining farm in his office where his electricity is paid. find someone who has access to a place like that

The cheapest electricity in the country is in Wenatchee, WA. The PUDs there retail electricity to the public at $0.0281 per kW. Rates can get down into the sub $0.02 range with enough usage.

http://www.douglaspud.org/NewsandReports/20122013RateAdjustment.aspx?highlight=rates

You can send the .5 BTC to the address below.

19N3XYeV6QjXqH3VHyJRi2RR9oMsxv8eUg

Easy. Alaska. Why? You get paid thousands just for being there, offsetting any electric costs.

Don't take this the wrong way but I'm confused on your numbers, I don't think they're right  ;D 8 KW/month isn't very much. 1000 kwh/d comes to 30000 at the end of the month, elec bill would be 900 bucks.

1000 kwh/day is 41.6 kw per hour which is a lot but its not so much you wouldn't be able to find a building to supply that. Solvay said they gave you some spots so I wouldn't be surprised if they worked out.

If you need help in the local area PM me and we can work something out. FWIW I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering Tech so I might not be completely useless to you haha.




edit: I looked back in the thread and tried to make myself useful. You said you were going to have 30 x4 7950s...the all knowing Google says they pull a little over 300 watts. 300 watts x 120 is 36 kW, 350 watts x 120 is 42 kW. Not sure what else is running or what exact brand of stuff you have so its not exact but definitely 'in the ballpark' of your 1000 kwh/day and 900 a month bill if you run it 24/7, excluding cooling/ventilation of course.

Who won the 5 BTC?

Actually I know this is probably a joke but :P if you went to somewhere like Alaska where it's pretty much cold all year round you wouldn't have to worry about cooling as much so that will probably keep the electricity cost down in the first place, either that or you can go to a really hot and sunny country where solar electricity is ridiculously easy to get and just make your own electricity.

I am currently quite busy working on my rig and getting in touch with various places, many of which were posted in this thread. As previously stated I should make my final plans and actually make some down payments for where I choose to set up shop in a month or so. The guy who posted about Wenatchee, WA is so far most likely to get it, I'm looking into there.

I did a little more research and found that electricity in Venezuela is in the neighborhood of $.013/kWh. It should be quite a bit lower with the devaluation they've done recently.

Wenatchee is by far the cheapest place for electricity in the US. I've done a bit of homework on this topic also....

This idea is already unfeasible at the current BTC prices.. makes no sense to invest in GPU hardware no more.

Probably right next to the power grid is cheapest I imagine.

What if a guy had a place in an industrial building with a 250A 3ph 480V service and rates around $.05?

Any idea how I might get in touch with someone interested in another farm?

Depends on what idea you speak of... ASIC farms can take a lot of power as well.

http://www.cityofplattsburgh-ny.gov/publicfiles/file/TARIFF%20PAGES.pdf

close maybe? Mad cheap electricity around here.

I would like to offer the same .5BTC bounty for anyone that can find a location with electricity <$.0.05 kwh that is within 20 mile radius of Philadelphia, PA.

Thanks for any leads.

Unfortunately, I cant find any that cheaper than $0.05. and this is the cheapest from what I found
https://i.imgur.com/5kBKIas.png?1

Electricity isn't cheap in Philly, if you include the distribution charge that price is around 15 cents per kWh.

Good point about the distibution costs.

If you are looking for the cheapest electricity costs you should keep in mind that this is just a percentage of the total cost per kwh. The other costs involved are often much bigger than the electricity itself.

If we look at the Belgian electricity cost, at first glance you could think it is cheap, around 5 to 8 € cents. If you dig a little deeper you will find out this is only about 35% of the total electricity bill. You have also distribution costs, transportation costs, green energy costs, taxes, fixed costs etc This will make the total cost of 1 kwh about 18 to 22 € cent, a world of difference.