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we all know about wind and solar and other sustainable power systems. we'd all love to operate our mining rigs off them too. well, let's discuss what it would ACTUALLY take to do, even if only at small scale.

site selection, construction costs, operating costs, tying into the grid to sell the power we didn't use for the hosted mining farms...

i mean, collectively we certainly have a chunk of money. let's consider putting some to use!

think about it: there's plenty of business hosting mining rigs. all that comes down to is cost of electricity and rent. so we use our power plant and the land it's on to host mining farms. then any extra power, we sell to the local grid.

or maybe just skip the hosted mining and stick to building a power plant. "you used your bitcoins to do WHAT?"

There exist readymade solutions where you could put a turbine or two in a river, and harvest the power. Of course, this would have a budget. Solar panels might have a toxic production process, so maybe they're not that environmental friendly when you look at the whole picture.

Is this a serious project? What's your expertise and background?

If you are holding enough amount of bitcoin, you have to convert to fiat to invest in building such power plants. If you have fiat cash, you don't need to bother to convert that cash to bitcoin. It is not question of using bitcoin as investing capital. If you are really having expertise at this, probably you can put this project in IPO, I thinks many peple are interested.

Well, alternative energy is interesting. If raising enough money, and being dedicated enough, a setup where you purchase land near a river, and have a broadband connection, you could very well have a nice operation going.

So the expenses would be:

1. Turbine in the river.
2. Wiring + batteries ?
3. Mining machines
4. Computer equipment, server room - cooling?
5. Solar and/or wind in addition?
6. Broadband connection
7. Living costs.
8. Buying land / apartment

Perhaps a cold climate would be best? I would think readymade solutions for water turbines are not too cheap, so perhaps a hobbyist could make one himself. Also, one must take into account maintenance. Moving parts will sooner or later go kaput, and need to be replaced, so spare parts must be on the premises so downtime will never be too long.

Also you need to take into account whether the water stream is suitable, is it strong enough to produce any meaningful amount of electricity, and is there seasonal variables?

The income could be, not all might apply:
1. Blogging about the adventure, getting money from ads. (likely not too much)
2. Writing guides for others wanting to do the same (moderate)
3. Have a gift shop online selling t-shirts with the projects logo.
4. Having tours at the facilities, for a small cost.
5. Selling surplus electricity to the local electricity company?
6. Mining bitcoins and/or other alt currencies.
7. Selling bitcoins, perhaps even at a premium for cash?

If you make a serious effort, I'm sure people would back you. The project could be dubbed 'the bitcoin turbine project' or similar. ;) Very interesting.

Great idea, the best way to fund this type of venture would be via BitPools. http://www.bitpools.com
People pooling their bitcoins toward a common goal.

Hello,



Can i know more details about this location and excepted annual rate of return ?

Thanks

This would be an interesting idea. I guess we'd just have to wait and see who would be willing to lead this idea.

I don't know in which country you are living in, but I think in a lot of countries, you can't just put a turbine into a river even if you own the land around it. I am not sure, to what extend a part of river can be yours. E.g. in Austria owning a forest does mean,  you still have to allow hikers to go in there.

So, of which country you are talking about and have you checked the regulatory framework?

I forgot to mention this. Red Tape is very present in many locations, so it would need to be checked. Although, some places they have a 'no check, never ask' policy.. If you moved to a very remote place, then nobody would probably bother you, but then the logistics of getting the gear in, restocking etc. could be a problem. Perhaps there are some countries where anyone can put any production gear into the river?

To extend this idea, making a whole community around bitcoin, freeing everyone from the slavery of fiat, would be an interesting project.  In some countries you can live and have a remote internet business and do not pay tax locally, legally.

until a 2kw solar panel able to support 24 hour mining (night and day) of a 1kw PSU powered mining rig is much cheaper than a thash mining rig. and also cheaper than 3 months of electric that would normally be spent, i see setting up a self sustaining mining power plant, to not be helpful.

Agreed, but micro-hydro could be used instead...

cost of turbine and power utility?

power plants cost billions to construct.  I don't think there are enough btc in existence to build one.

Maybe you can set up a firm where you get investors to contribute in btc and use the money to purchase solar powered mining rig. The returns from mining are then get paid back to the investors in btc.

Or find a company that specializes in this and jv with them. Then u don't have to worry on the tech part.

In this aspect electricity cost can be almost eliminated. Only the equipment cost (rig + solar), maintenance, .....yeah maybe viable in the long run

Around 8k usd will afford you a microhydro system for 4KW. So 4-6 decent mining asics would be powered. This would net a break even point of between 1.5-1.7 years on investment from electricity alone vs asics using paid power. System life before replacement is 15-25 years.

I have done a fair bit of research with micro hydro because I want to install one on my farm soon.

Haha. That's so cool! Do you need a permit from your local govt for that? Or do you don't bother about that?

Of course he isn't serious, he posted an idea on a forum. If he was serious it would say "I am now putting together these things and figuring out what to do." Instead the OP is asking us to do leg work for him to entertain his idea. Forums are mostly places for people who want to talk about their great ideas and opinions, not places where anything gets done(for the most part). Check through the posts, hardly anything gets done because of these forums(unless you count advertisements popping up).

sigh.

No permit needed but it is better to get one as my country allows for a reversible meters where excess electricity goes back into the grid effectively making the grid act as the battery and removing the need for banks of batteries.  With microhydro you design the system to meet all your electrical needs during peak usage and than the system will continuously produce that power. Any power not used at a given moment can be fed back into the grid creating a credit balance that can than be used in addition to the microhydro later on or you can use the excess electricity to do other things like heat water.

Yes, very interesting. I've read abit about stuff like this. I would like to do it myself at one point, when conditions allow for it. Have you considered blogging about this? I for one, would love to see the project unfold.

yeah... Im probably going to film a bit of the project and will let you guys know if I throw in an asic or 2.

Today you can buy anything with Bitcoin and it's the next craziest thing. But you can't buy Facebook with all btc in circulation.

if your serious about this idea, there's money to be made!

Just crowd fund it through an asset exchange. But you gotta prove yourself before investors will fund you.
eg. nxt asset exchange, xcp asset exchange. (http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/)

well your idea is BIG both literally and figuratively. But that's the point, who knows, you could be one step away from the next big thing. 8) 8)

to be clear: i have zero expertise in anything related to this and very little general managerial experience. i've worked quality assurance in the game industry, have a basic level of skill with fiberglass and such, and right now am driving for Uber, as a glorified taxi.

this spawned from the 3 acres or so my in laws live on in north texas (45 minutes north of dallas) that they don't put to any use. i was thinking it'd be great to set up some solar to cover our own needs, then the thinking just kept growing. biggest problem we have is broadband internet... JUST a little out of range of cable company coverage. no DSL, even. i'm connected via a 3g cellular connection right now...

i'd love to be a part of something like this, even if limited in scale. there's rivers and lakes around me too. no idea on regulatory stuff. was just bouncing the idea.

small is certainly the way to go. test it out, then expand and such. if land on a river proves too costly, and toxic manufacturing is a concern, perhaps mirrors to boil water to turn a steam turbine? god knows it gets sunny as hell around here... still 90 degrees out today.

again, i'm just talking right now. thought the idea might get some interesting discussion. as for acting, that's down the line a wee bit.

I'm usually not that blunt, but this has been tried before and it went to shit:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=77469.msg861305#msg861305

Basically you are betting that you will be offsetting your initial cost of installing the plant against electricity cost of your mining competitors. Thing is, the major farms are getting such low electricity as they buy in bulk, they are way ahead of you.

Basic example:

You: 100'000 for a smallish plant, completed in x weeks, months.

Your competition: With 100'000 they can get electricity for 230kW for about a year at 5 cents.
Your competition is mining _now_ whilst you need to build that plant.

Please crunch your numbers before attempting this. Include network difficulty and exchange rate numbers too.

Also, internet speed is not that important for mining. The stratum protocol uses little bandwith. Depending on distance and topography you also could use a wifi antenna to reach several kilometers.

Hmmm... at those 5cent rates the breakeven for electricity alone would be around 5 years with micro hydro . The problem I see with Diablo mining company is they went solar which far slower of a payback than micro-hydro and more maintenance. The problem is micro hydro is that you either need a piece of land with a small river or spring and a 300 meter + drop in elevation (High velocity , low volume) or a 3-6 meter drop and large amounts of continuous water (Low velocity /high volume) so this limits the available locations.

    The thread indicates-" Between 158% and 183% of the original investment has been repaid." so i don't think it was a total failure of a project even with the big mistake of using solar.


There could be other motivations for this project -
1) Wanting to increase mining decentralization
2) Wanting to give opportunity for an average user to have a fairer distribution in earnings as a partner vs cloud mining
3) Wanting to provide green mining solutions to encourage others to follow suit and set a standard for bitcoin for years to come

This being said, if anyone wanted to put together this project you may as well try to at least accomplish these aspects:

1) Have a suitable location already where land wouldn't need to be purchased to lower costs until it is scaled up.
2) Design a system that reused the waste heat from all the asic miners in a productive means. I.E. heating water for homes, heating a warehouse, ect...
3) Absolutely do the math and determine the best return(which means solar is probably out unless you build a multi-million dollar solar tower)
4) If the land is single purpose use make sure it is being utilized for something else as well

Note that those are DiabloD3's (thread OP) comments. Diablo Mining Company has never built anything. Because of issues like "zero expertise in anything related to this and very little general managerial experience" for starters. Any "return" was thanks to the BTC rate rising from IPO time to close down time and measured in USD. People who just held the BTC instead of investing in DMC were a lot better off. Total failure is a good description of that venture.

But I agree, as an enthusiast's project with the land and hydro requirements (and some places you need the rights to use that water too) and not expecting any or very little return - sure why not.

I like this one: http://www.zotloeterer.com/welcome/ If I could, I would.

Good points. Any such proposal should be comprehensive in nature to increase profits and differentiate yourself from the rest of the miners. Some people choose to pay more for green power sources. This would allow small profits to be realized while at the same time help the community and set a good example.

One should never expect anything but small profits on mining regardless, the market is too competitive.

Imagine the good press the community would receive and the myths that we would dispel from environmentalists or PoS /DPOs proponents who constantly smear PoW as being incredibly wasteful and bad for the environment.

A permaculture farm , with ASICS and everything powered by microhydro, that used the heat to dehydrate organic fruits, that are both sold and given away to charities to fight hunger which was owned and controlled by a co-opt decentraly. Now that would be awesome.

Please, someone steal these ideas and run with them .... I may do so myself on my land as I have most of those things already.

I think a wind turbine will be the most efficient one if you can find a place where the wind blows all the time

near the coast or something like that


water turbine if you have a waterfall near you just go for it


more I don't know, I'm just thinking this would be great places where you will get a lot of energy

Wow, I have seen 4 different categories of microhydro but this is a completely new one! Interesting product but a lack of prices and exclusive patents scare me ... their kit probably costs a fortune.

If you honestly have 3 acres of land you should look into planting rare trees. Some trees after grown for a few to 5 or 6 years are worth hundreds to thousands of dollars per tree. Depending on where you live that is infinitely more lucrative than hosting mining for someone(and a hell of a lot easier). Seriously, you can make some major bank. People do bamboo farming(labor intensive though) and they make 100k+ a year on a few acres, just by selling it because bamboo is used in furniture and other eating utensils more and more. A rare white oak or yew tree or whatever the hell is rare these days is seriously an easy way to make bank if it is unused property. only thing u gotta worry about is caging things off from deer who eat the things while they are small trees, but if u can protect everything for a year u are good. good luck.

rather than trees you better plant truffles

i know i know ... many of you will say it's not possible to plant truffles ... well it is because you just have to buy the right trees that have the truffles at their roots ... wait a few years then sell the truffles :)

Or just buy a power plant.

This would not work in the way you intended. You appear to be trying to be figuring out a way to get "free" or reduced cost electricity. Any kind of setup that allows you to sell excess electricity back to the grid will not achieve this goal. Your cost of electricity that is used by your miners will be the amount you could get for the electricity by selling it back to the grid. The net effect would actually probably be that you have higher electric costs as you will have to pay for the solar panals

Technically with microhydro you don't need to sell any back to the grid, but I agree in your premise if you are only considering solar or wind which has transient production times.

http://www.green-trust.org/wordpress/tag/hydro/

With a 160 meter head and 0.087 m3/s of volume you can generate 100 kWh with a ~3 k usd turgo turbine.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Pelton-water-turbine-generator/1836459433.html

So you may need this product for certain areas or applications , but it would be wiser to select an area which didn't necessitate it.

As you can see, there are many designs with a wide price range depending upon your environment.

You mean build a power plant.

I would think a location with 5 feet head is easier to find than a 160 meter head location. Flow requirements seem similar. I agree, every situation is different. Looks like the 3k is just the generator? In the 45k are several things included (see their site), basically all you have to do is build the basin.

Yes, 2 k for the generator. 3 k shipped.

The Z O T L Ö T E R E R GWVPP-kit consists of:

(1) Planning papers for getting the authorisation and for building the rotation tank.

(2) Single licence.

(3) Coarse screen, weir gate and inflow gate.

So the kit for 45k is basically the generator alone, some screen, and valves which the link I provided includes too.

The 3k is just the start of the costs, one has to add concrete, the piping , extra valves, installation, copper cabling , ect.... So it would more likely be 10k for everything.

The product you are suggesting would run at least 55k and is better for areas of little to no elevation and a tremendous amount of water. You would need 900gallons per second of water just to produce 40kwh with that unit!

 So if you had access to a large lake attached to a river than this may work. Otherwise high velocity , low volume is better.

Scroll down a bit more ;)



I agree Zotloeterer is probably more expansive. You also could argue China quality vs. Austria quality, but in the end the location and topography dictates what you can use.

The way the Peltonturbine works you are also looking at building a basin of sorts at the top of the head and from there a straight downpipe to the shed where you have the Turbine.

Yes, those components are not needed in the other generator because of the design differences. But I agree, The quality of the Austrian one will be higher and ultimately the location and water available will determine the best application. I like the Zotloeterer design but there is always a tradeoff if you have something proprietary and patented. One has to consider the availability of parts , and replacement of components in the future as well.

This would be very interesting....and useful.

:)

You don't ever need to sell electricity back to the grid. It is economical to do so if you have extra electricity then what you can use. If the option is there then any rational person would do so

Fuding with bitcoin is like funding with money... nothing to do with bitcoin itself