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I know there's at least a couple of miners out there who have big solar arrays, lets see em!
I guess it doesn't have to be solar, any renewable energy is ok as long as it's yours!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27335519/20120118_125838thumb.jpg

30x 175W panels. Total output of 5.25kW.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27335519/20120118_133621thumb.jpg

Sunny Boy meter on day view (honestly not the best day for it)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27335519/20120118_133634thumb.jpg

Month view!

Those look great.

Mind telling suppliers/price? I've been looking at building a couple panels for camping and such.

i'm in australia, so i'm not sure whether i'll be able to help you out. if you're still interested, send me a pm!

Could you just tell us how much it cost you, I'm always interested in hearing more about peoples setups


3.73kW would cover basically all of our household usage, course, your system also cost in the 1-10k range, which we don't have the money for

It'd only cover you in the daytime.

I have yet to see any sort of solar panel system that would allow for less than a 20 year payback on the original cost (assuming it wasn't subsidized).  They need to find a way to make them cheaply enough that payback is 5 years or less, then I'll buy into the fad.

ha! now you're dreaming. the total cost (panels, inverter, installation) cost approximately $70k AUD, then there was a $10k government rebate. The solar scheme we're on allows us to draw at 0.2069/kWh, and feed in at 0.44/kWh. my initial calculations give it about a 28 year payback period, although there's really not enough data yet, i expect it's a bit less than that. if we add another 10 panels (bringing it up to a 7kW system) that'll drop the total payback period down to around 24 years (any panels added on top now have a payback period of roughly 11 years). unfortunately, 40 panels is the max that the inverter can handle before another one has to be installed (expensive).


Sunny QLD.

Well, 10k really meant 10k, 20k, 30k etc etc, dunno why I included 1k-10k, maybe because I was secretly hoping prices has gone way down since I last looked :P

When will the price of this technology drop to realistic levels.  Are there no big big companies that want to push something good for everyone?   So much free energy wasted every day

I heard Wal-Mart is putting solar panels on top of all its stores.

http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/wal-mart-to-go-solar-on-60-more-california-stores.html

If Wal-Mart puts solar panels on EVERY store worldwide, that is going to be a HUGE price drop (hopefully).  Things get cheaper when you make lots of them.

Wal-Mart, still evil in my books, though.

They are also putting fuel cells on several locations, which is IMHO a much better use of alternative energy. They are buying into the "Bloom energy server" (http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/02/25/coke-ebay-google-wal-mart-buy-bloom-fuel-cells/) (link to the Bloom website (http://www.bloomenergy.com/fuel-cell/energy-server/)) which provides 200KW per cell - pretty substantial.

I once cooked a copper sheet on an oven and used it to make a solar panel. I feel that this story is relative to this thread.  8)

At this rate, the sun may burn out before that happens.

Nice setup. The PV systems are almost as bad as those huge 3-blade wind turbines. The price is too high. It's more about feeling good to be doing something for the enviro. They just cost too much and that cost is too slow to recoup. You end up paying to maintain them too.

The real free energy is all around us. Check out the guy that heated his big, old midwest home using a $200 digester. He was getting 90,000 BTU.

Solar rulz. Sun mostly shines the most when demand is highest (noon). Solar panels are already without subsidies competitive in high price markets. For the people with 5cent/kwh: It still will take sometime to be useful. For the 15 cent/kwh people: up to 5 years, definitely not longer for you people. Also people tend to forget: a solar panel still works in 20 years+++

But its not "the solution" for the energy problem: just another piece of the puzzle

i like to think of them as a long term investment, like shares/securities. but there's pretty much no way they can lose value, (the sun ain't going to stop shining in Australia any time soon, and energy prices sure ain't going down), and they're good on the environment. works for me.

i also really enjoy looking at the data it provides, and the constant battle to minimise power consumption during the day to improve benefits. i love my wattsclever (kill-a-watt)!

Let's now add some sound to those solar powered mining rigs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93brSy--nyg

People attending the CCC summercamp in Finowfurth last summer 2011 might have spotted this Money Tree:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8PHe91cn7Go/TzTL4uJLFUI/AAAAAAAAAA4/vpI_5kIdHUg/s800/moneytree-ccc-summercamp-2011.jpg

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117667596272309394278/albums/5707410803593713825/5707410803104879938 (https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/117667596272309394278/albums/5707410803593713825/5707410803104879938)

A single Atom + GPU based machine on a solar power pannel. Granted, small but off the grid ;-)

Your post, SolarSilver, inspired this thread: The Money Tree https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63356.0

~Bruno~

that's pretty awesome!

My calculations put payback at a much lower 19.75 years, assuming you sell all the electricity back to the power co, rather than using a portion... obviously there's not much data to go by (only 18 days in your picture, and there was a lot of guessing at what the exact numbers were)

Though, I forgot to subtract the 10k rebate...


Oh shit, and I forgot it was currently summer there.... >.> which means during the winter months you'll get less power than that... >.>

Hell with the solar cells. Let's just boil some water with a fresnel lens and build a steampunk mining rig.

http://peswiki.com/images/0/0b/SirCharlesShults_fresnel_lens_300.jpg

Not necessarily. There's always the possibility of the panel breaking (neighborhood kid's baseball going through it, tree branch falling on it, etc), or rust/corrosion turning it into a pile of scrap, or some other unrepairable damage happening.  Solar panels aren't going to last forever, and I wouldn't even expect one to last 20 years on average.  I could be wrong though.

Actually I would be interested in longevity data for solar panels. They have been around for a while, are there any old installations that are still working?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080911082656AAmOnYD

What's amazing to me is that I've gone from reading that original tree post to this: http://inventorspot.com/articles/electricity_dirt_is_it_possible_17670

Then this: http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=42320

Then this: http://www.lightingafrica.org/component/k2/itemlist/filter.html?all_langs=yes&searchword=donate

To finally this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterdicampo/life-without-lights

What a journey!

~Bruno~

That's pretty badass

Yep! They melt solid steel and iron, and you can get one from one an old discarded big screen TV's.

That is awesome.

Man, that is EPIC!!!!

Yea, some of the first solar panels built are still running 25+ years

How many hash's there ?

So many, that it melts all that try to handle its raw power  ;)

the solar panels come with a 25 year warranty and power guarantee. no, that doesn't cover baseballs or tree branches, but insurance will. so i can say with confidence that they'll still be going strong in at least 25 years.