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Hi guys,

Could do with some advice please, in the near future I am thinking about setting up a very small mining farm, we already have the power setup for around 10-15 miners.

A couple of questions.

1. Do you just pay your electric bill as normal? obviously 10 miners = £££ per month in electric.

2. Do you need to setup as a business, I am based in the UK and for the foreseeable future, any profits I make from crypto will be going back into hardware.

Anybody else who has done the above is kind enough to give me some good advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

Hello mate,

1. Not sure I understand your question?
2. I'm not in the UK but afaik, this is not a necessity. You could set up an ltd or something like that, the only real cost you'll have is the notary act stating your like "president" of your business (at least that's how it goes over here). It can be interesting to set up a business for tax reasons since you can pass all your hardware as an investment for getting your business going, these things are usually deductible. However, you'll have to do your own accounting etc. which can be a hassle if you've never done it before. Depending on where you live, cryptos are considered as a revenue. Some places also won't tax your coins as long as you don't convert to fiat (like in France, you can hold 10 BTC but you only get taxed if you sell them, that's what I was told at least).

Other things that come to mind:
1. Insure your hardware (whether you have a business or not)
2. Have the electricity work done a by a professional (I think you already have)
3. Standardize, just like you would if you'd be managing the IT at a firm :-)

I hope you trust your power setup. As you probably know, putting too many powerful rigs on the same circuit could trigger a circuit breaker, blow a fuse, start a fire, etc.

If you're doing this at a residence:
The utility company might contact you if they notice your electricity use jumping significantly, just as a precaution so that they can confirm that your increased usage is intentional and not a sign of any problems. If there's an actual hard cap on your usage at your electricity rate, you may have to renegotiate with your utility company.

You should not have to register for a business just to put together a bunch of computers to be run 24/7. It may or may not be useful for you to do so. Businesses are sometimes billed for electricity differently from residences. In the US, most residential power bills are based on the energy used, in kWh. Bills for commercial facilities (if you're running this at a separate location) are more complicated (often with considerations for peak usage and whatnot) and I can't tell you right off the bat if you'd save money with that sort of a billing method. I would guess that it's not that significant for a small farm, but I could be wrong.
Additionally, as the above poster mentioned, there may be some tax benefits available to you by registering a business.

I'm not in the UK, so my advice may or may not apply to your specific situation.

As far as the power setup goes, my dad has a huge workshop that has 3 phase electric, it uses to be for heavy plant machinery.. its just going to waste now...

I think the best thing for me to do is contact an accountant?

Okay, I don't know how your breaker board is set up, but usually, when you have something like this for heavy machinery, you're going to have one big jumper at 25A or more for the machinery itself and maybe a few 10-13A breakers for the lights and a few sockets. The problem with this is, that if you put all your miners on that one jumper, if it breaks, all your rigs go offline until you manually reset the jumper.

You need to plan your electrical setup better depending on your hardware and how much cards you put on one rig. For instance:

1x 6 card rig will pull around 900W dual mining ETH/SIA
1x 8 card rig will pull around 1150W dual mining

(this is with undervolted cards and assuming you're on 220V). So:

1x 6 card rig will pull 900W/220V = 4A
1x 8 card rig will pull 1150/220 = 5.2A

If you have only 13A breakers for the sockets, that means you can put a max of 3x 6 card rigs or only 2x 8 card rigs. Anything above that and the jumper will break.

Ideally, and this is just what I did at home to be safe, you could/should install 16A jumpers to have more leg room. Each socket should be connected to one of those jumpers with at least 2.5mm2 gauge electrical wires . The wire gauge is very important here if you don't want things to catch fire, the temperature can get the plastic in the wires to melt until they come in conctact. Too many people put many rigs on classic residential sockets where the wiring isn't made to support a high amperage for long periods of time.

I would say, before getting an accountant, get yourself an electrician that can look over the setup.

Hi again thanks for the reply, he has a huge gauge of wiring running down our garden it's very thick, i recall him saying its sitting on its own breaker and i think he said something about 40amps but i will need ot confirm , it will be for the next release of L3+ they release.

I will get it confirmed and give you guys some updates, it was done my an electrician years ago, for a woodworkers workshop, its a double skinned place   ( same construction as a house ) around 100 foot in length by 30ft in width, so quite a nice size.

You will have to check that with company you are buying power from. In my country for example there are thee zones. Low, Medium and High consumption one, and each one have different power cost. If you try smth like that here you would end up in High consumption zone and you would buy at a greater rate.

Just get some 3 phase PDU's for your setup, and have an electrician add a breaker box.  Big breaker - new breaker box - rig breakers - PDU - rig

Again, do not make estimations of your own, just call a professional to make all the necessary measurements and ask him for the maximum load figure for running the equipment 24 hours a day measured in Wt/h. As long as there is no limit on electricity consumption in your case (check that with you dad, if you gonna use his facilities), there is no need to register you farm or report it to the authorities. That said, make a really good study of the rising difficulty and the equipment amortization, and do not use credit funds for mining or you will most likely go broke and in debt before you know it. Meanwhile try everyday trading alts on a test account for a month or two - to see if you get better and safe with trading, than mining (or combining both).

Hello Ryancope
Just for reference when you calculate the fuse breakers for the mining rigs, consider the next things:

Divide Consumption (W/h per Volts=Amps) and you will have the exact amperage for protection
The Amps you can increase it between 5% to 15% of the total result of the above equation.
Keep in mind that you can put individual fuses for each rig, or you can place 2 or 3 rings on a fuse (don´t forget that if the fuse blows the rigs connected to it might go off-line)
The best thing also to keep in mind is the weather
If where you want to put your mining rig is cold, its even better, because as you know for sure, the rigs generate lots of heat.
Any question feel free to ask... :)