Bitcoin Forum

Hi, I am interested in finding alternative sources for electricity to run my 1000W rig. I only make 180$ a month, but have to pay close to 100$ just for electricity.

Please enlighten me with any alternatives for power.

Thanks
-Nick

....................................................Solar...................... ........................

What do you recommend to power a 1000W system without blowing my pocket?

Please let me know

I do think the previous poster stated solar panels.
With a limited income, it is an expensive purchase, but an investment that in the right environment pays off.

With a lot of sun comes great benefits with solar panels. Some solar panels companies here in Europe (maybe the same is true in CA) will even give you the panels for free, install it for free, but they keep all the "profits" after usage.
You just get the reward of never having a electricity bill ever again. It's worth it if you don't want to worry about the investment factor.

There is also wind turbines, but I don't know as much as those.

One thing to consider though is if you can save money by using less electricity.
Undervolting in the right place I've seen really powerful GPU's drop to half their normal usage by massively lowering the voltage going to the memory and obviously declocking the memory aswell. Not like you need it for Mining anyway.

Do abit of Google searching and i'm sure with the above information you can find something that works out for you.

Thanks for the help! Do you have a rig that you would like to share some info on?

Thanks!

Undervolt the GPU may make it unstable?

No Problem.

I have 2 other Rigs I have at home (than the one mentioned in my signature), one is essentially a home server and the other is a gaming PC that uses an nvidia card, however they are consider in-practical for bit mining, so only my laptop I use for bitmining, (HP Dv6 range) that has a Llano APU + a discrete card. Details of those two processors in my signature.

Concerning the solar panels, I don't have any direct experience with it, but I got a friend in the south of england who got half their roof covered in solar panels (also another in the south of france). It really didn't cost them anything. They just had to own the home and be in an ideal location and the house it self (the roof) pointing in the preferred direction. The system he has will handle 3-6kwh worth. He barely makes use of all, he's not a huge tech junkie, at least not yet, he just liked the idea of no electricity bill. Which it achieved.

It sure could have the potential to yes.
However like most tweaking things. Give it more volts and you can go faster.
Give it less volts and you can make it slower flows true.
With the right testing you keep it stable by lowering the speed and the voltage together.

Every graphics card is different, some will do this easier than others. This forum more than any other will have that sort of information and advice on those experienced in doing that. This is nothing more than general advice.

Many find you can lower the memory to go as slow as 300Mhz, this can allow you to push some pretty low voltages to it.
After all you don't care how bad the performance is if your using it exclusively for bitmining, as long as it doesn't end up becoming unstable.
If you are using it for general or dual purposes, I would not recommend it however.

The only best solution is solar, which may cost a lot at first but you'll benefit in the long run by a LOT.

I live on my own and I live in an area where I don't pay for bills  :P
Therefore I can run a huge rig and it all gets paid, for me, for free :)

Solar energy is a good way to go. Neighbor has about some panels (are there different sizes?) mounted on his roof and he says, that one can make 100-150W during sunny day. They work effectively only for couple of hours a day as the efficiency dramatically drops when sun hits the panel from angle (if you have them statically mounted), but still, it will cut at least 1/5 of your expenses.

here (netherlands) I pay € 0,22 for KWH. So solarpanels are almost a good deal, however, It requers a large investment and I rather invest in FPGA at the moment and it's not so sunny here (my more sunnier every year, due to global warming).

I am also paying 0,2€ per kWh.. but its for fun.. so money is not everything...

Look on ebay for 250 watt panels,I did,they cost about $350 each.Then you need an inverter or two,$300 or so & some deep cycle batteries (1 per panel maybe??),from a semi maybe,$100 each.May even need a charger if the inverter dosen't charge.

So about $1600-$2500 & then some help from an electrician..........................

I'm just guessing as I haven't done a setup yet,but I don't think I'm too far off.

Solar costs a lot of money to setup, and won't pay itself for a long time (I thought it was some 10+ years...)

You best bet to notice a quick drop in electrical costs would be to drop the core a bit, then really drop that voltage to as low as possible. You'd probably be able to drop that 1000w to around 700-800w. Other then that, I'd suggest one of those FPGAs from BFL. Like a few BFL Singles or something.

You could always create a small nuclear powerplant in your yard.

But Solar is an incredibly cheap method in California. I live in Maryland, and was looking at Solar Panels to power my entire house, and for $40,000 I could set everything up. Plus there is a quite high tax rebate if you buy solar panels. My calculations showed the Solar Panels would pay themselves off in 4-6 years, and thats with some of the cheapest electricity in the country at $.07/KWH.

I've always thought it'd be just plain silly to buy some cheap engines off of craigslist/ebay - convert them to biodiesel and then just get restaurants to give me their leftover cooking oil.
Filter it yourself, start the engine up in a generator like fashion, huzzah!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/diane-tegarden/2010/04/20/april-20th-meet-tamra-fakhoorian

Oh, I am sure that is the only thing a bunch of hippies will be doing on April 20th...

I have free electricity where I live :)

Can I move my entire operation to your house then?

lol

Anyhow, from the research I have done, FPGA would be a FAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR better option money wise than solar.

Solar panels are EXPENSIVE as HELLLLL for only like 2000w models.

Look into natural gas generators.

Use low capital cost solar
1. Plant potatoes in a sunny location
2. Wait
3. Eat potatoes
4. Pedal generator bike
5. ....
6. Profit

I'm assuming you're actually pulling 1000W from the wall, and not just using a 1000W PSU. What do you have for cards? Have you lowered the voltages?

It might be worth it to sell your cards and buy some BFL. Even if the cards don't completely cover the cost of the BFL, the decrease in your electricity bill will make up for it in no time.

I was asked to give abit more detail on something I explained on page 1.
(Free solar panels)

In England, there is a local Gov assistance program, that solar companies take advantage off.
The most well known one in England is probably:
http://ashadegreener.co.uk/

However there is a lot that do it since being a government backed program to have more people using solar panels, it has encourage many companies to get in on providing the service.

Most find that, once installed you can buy them off them, with a loan since if they generate a lot, it's worth for the savings and profit that they can provide. It works out cheaper that way, than buying outright sometimes.

You said Europe, so unless you country does a similar program, they probably won't exist, or if they do hard to find.

Hope it is useful to someone :)

I'd like to see someone on the coast use the waves for energy...like a mill construct of some kind... :-\

Distill potatoes into high grade vodka.
Burn some in a small alcohol turbine hooked to generator
Drink rest, reminisce on how smart you are.

I actually know how to build a very low grade nuclear reactor using everyday household items. Most people have thorium, radium, and americium (and a few other elements I won't mention) lying around that they don't even know about. It's just a matter of extracting it from your smoke detector, "glow-in-the-dark" watch, and a few other places. Of course, it would be a health/radioactive nightmare. It would make more of a dirty bomb then a actual reactor capable of producing enough electricity to power your mining rig.

Good luck finding a radium watch these days. Glow-in-the-dark watches now use tritium, which is much safer and much more useless in an RTG. (Though an RTG built from household radiation sources would be pretty useless anyway.)

uhmm... like 1mW?

if you use a bicycle, you can generate around 0.1 to 0.2kwh, My pc uses max 60 watts and 1 BFL single (yet to receive) abut 80 watts. so i have to cycle fast, but would be possible to power this 140 watt setup... but of course you want to have it running (cycling) for 24/7... hmm...

maybe I could look into a gas generator (as natural gas here is lots cheaper than KWH) or fuelcel?

thinking about it... even though electricity is expensive here... cycling for 10 hours generates 1 to 2 kwh, saving $ 0.30 to $ 0.60 on electricity.... unless I want to loose a lot of weight, i eat way more than $ 0.60 those 10 hours!

I'm self employed and my office space includes electric in the rent. I bet you can guess where I mine.... Moral of the story - rent an office, fill it with miners.

I have a friend using Uranium to power his nuclear rector.

Funny. I noticed someone selling uranium ore on Silk road while I was browsing through the armory the other day

if you're in the US, you can easily order it from
http://unitednuclear.com/
And it's mostly legal too.

How'd you get out from under your bridge?

haha, he has a point there, but mr. troll fails to recognize that ppt could default with my 400btc.

Switch to FPGA or sell your rig and invest in mining companies on the GLBSE...

Bro, at least give me some credit for showing you that site.

http://files.sharenator.com/Rageface_Proposed_to_my_girlfriend_last_night-s350x293-252389-535.png

can't believe the nuclear energy website is for real!!

energy is also super expensive where I live (brazil, belo horizonte), it costs almost as much as in london .... :/

You can use your neighbor elrictricity, or state , public )

Maybe rent an apartment where electricity costs are included in the bills?

http://www.unitednuclear.com/images/mainpics/nerd.gif <--- die with this  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I did that for a while several years ago... not with bitcoin, but with a bunch of webservers.  Took them ~2 months before they booted me out telling me that the servers were an industrial use in what was supposed to be a commercial zone or something like that.  I didn't have the cash or care to fight it.  YMMV.

Buy solar panels or wind turbines. Those are relatively inexpensive long-term solutions for energy.

steal it

Solar panels are definitely a good option, and fairly cost effective with the tax breaks available.