Bitcoin Forum

I am in the USA. I am wondering what ways there are to get free electricity. For example, maybe certain office leases come with electricity up to a certain amount. Maybe the place i work wouldn't notice or care if half a dozen power supplies were humming away in my cube. How about buying a home that has lots of solar panels just for the sake of hosting miners.....

When i was in college, our apartment rent came with electricity. I am doubtful though something like that would hold up long with the electricity bill was all of a sudden 2k a month.

Any ideas appreciated, thanks

Move into a building built in the 1960 and prior.

Okay...You sparked my curiosity. Why 1960 and prior???

'

Most buildings built in the 70s or prior didn't have individual meters because electricity was super cheap in most of North America.

So there are buildings where you pay a fixed rate per year. At the end of the year they take the entire buildings bill and split it against all the occupants. So your 1-2KW miner won't really have much an effect against hundreds of other occupants.

It would be too expensive to re-wire all the electricals just to put in individual meters. I am sure these days "MOST" miners who are still mining with old hardware are only mining because they don't pay for electricity. I am pretty sure this is true for anyone out there still mining with GPUs since its next to impossible to make money on those if you pay for electricity.

Also most business and offices have really cheap or fixed electricity. So you can ask your boss if you are allowed. Most tech companies don't mind.

And if you are a student and live at a college or university you should have free electricity also.

The thing is it is hard to get something of value for free  :o

Like you said though solar panels could be looked at although i am not sure how effective they would be on an average size set up, you could see how much a large generator costs and set up in you're garage if you have one because i reckon that would be pretty loud.

You can even be naughty and bypass the meter but i would not recommend it long term  ;D

I personally would phone my energy company and let them know i was going to be using alot of electric and to use them it needed to be cheaper than X, i am sure you would get a cheap enough deal.

Good luck  

Has anyone looked seriously into their own hydro electric appliance like this

http://www.zotloeterer.com/welcome/gravitation-water-vortex-power-plants/

Costs 60,000 Euro and you get 8,3kW

Well nothing to do :) i have free electricity :) till my father gets retired !

It only takes a few heavy miners to burn through his retirement pretty quickly... isn't he paying attention?

Pay attention to what ?
I have free electricity my computer always on downloading 24/7
But unfortunately dont have miners only some usb miners :(

A deal with the owner of the place for a fixed price for electricity. You move in someone else's place and pay a fixed price for rent and utilities. You place your miner at someone who doesn't pay electricity.

If you work as an IT Administrator, you'd probably have access to the Datacenter, Comm, or Server closet.  The costs of running and cooling this locked off room are probably a part of the lease deal already.

Rack and stack 'em up high!   :D




P.s. - I'm not condoning this type of action, but if you somehow have the keys and access to this room, a couple of "test servers" would hardly be noticed.

There is no true "free power" someone pays for it.

Really only way is like you mention rent and it includes electricity.   Most rentals do not do this its only common in college/university big apartment complex's.  You could move back in one they cannot make being a student required.  But I doubt it would be worth it as most you pay a pretty penny for the housing. 

The problem is finding something that's "free" electricity but also can handle the amps for a nice setup.

Depends on every country. In  some people get free electricity as part of the job.

too expensive!

old diesel generator running on waste fats ::)

Or waist fats, if you live near a liposuction clinic.

is this a serious possibility? sounds not... butcher shop....?

Just had this strategy:

Natural gas generator + land with your own natural gas

http://www.wisesales.com/kohler-20resal-20kw-standby-generator-w-200a-ats-se.html?gclid=CjwKEAiA05unBRCymrGilanF9SwSJACqDFRmt2NUwGnbNBH86uKmBnF8cTLuSKstHAY85PMgzqflDBoCDSrw_wcB

Find property that has a low producing well that won't justify a high property value. Buy property, plug in your generators... bam.

How many sp20s can I run on 20kwh?

Can any of you electricians tell me what this means?????

Generator rated at:

18 kw (NG)
Rated AC Current 75A (NG) @ 240 Volts (Single Phase)
Rated Voltage    240 Volts (Single Phase)

So from this generator how many SP20s can I run? I think one sp20 wants 1400 watts, so this one generator can run 12 SP20s???

Thanks!

I am pretty sure its cheaper to get electricity from your outlet then buying diesel to generate electricity.

You can steal it from your neighbors house. :) I'm just joking. The best way is probably to find a office space or someone who has free electricity and host it there. Although don't host too many or the land lord would surely find out.

This generator takes natural gas. Many homes in the USA have their own natural gas well on the property. So I am trying to see what cost feasibility might look like.

yes it is! google wvo, atf, wmo

got myself over 100litres of wvo from restaurants and i didn't try that hard!

I don't think you would want to run it at 100% all the time.

I had the same idea of finding a natural gas well and building a steel warehouse next to it,  but there are a lot of other costs involved that would hurt you if the difficulty spiked or the price went down or both.

Personally I am looking for a used 100-250KW wind generator on eBay to install at my industrial warehouse.  I am just waiting for the city to get back to me on how big I can go.  I also have a large flat roof that I can install 100-150KW of solar but they will only produce for 5-6 hours a day.  But the tax credits and rebates from the power company will bring my electricity costs down to about .06/kwh

Running a generator 24/7 is not a good idea. The generator will ware out quickly if it is a cheap generator. Once fuel prices go back up it will cost more to run, and overall it is most likely more of a headache then just paying your electricity bill.

other than stealing it---which if you choose to do you're a douchebag--none of it is free.
However my electric company in the U.S. offers different rates you can choose if you use a lot of power.
Regular residential electricity is about .13kwh or commercial is about .09kwh.


Low cost alt electric such as wind/solar would be good after you get ROI on equipment.

Simple, Old-School Extortion.  Where's the money?  You got the money? 

Someone owe you money?  Make them install Bitcoin miners as a "Debt Pilferer" (Pilfer = steal small amounts but do it repeatedly)

Works like a charm, many people don't have thousands laying around so $10 a day works for me, their bill, not my problem.

You can also render debt collection services at a 25% return; someone owes your client $10,000, get it over time at a 25% or $2,500 cut.

Kinda like a poor man's debt collector service since collection agencies cost heaps.

You can also ask relatives to host a few miners for you; many will host them at no cost to help you and be part of the revolution.

Yeah, a bit barbaric for most but so is what you ask... you're either looking at a lawsuit or a lot of ass kissing.

You do what you gotta do, to me an unpaid debt is still a debt where interest accumulates over time.

Thanks to Bitcoin, we're no longer running the "Trade-in Your Organs Today & We'll Remove Your Cement Shoes" program...  ;D

You ask stupid questions, you get stupid answers... however, debt pilfer is very popular with deadbeats who owe me money.

I get free power because the landlord owes me a lot of money and couldn't pay me in one lump sum.

Last way is either Solar, Wind or Hydro (which means fluid) or via a wood gasifyer but then you need a lot of wood but still comes to less than $0.01 per KW/h, that's basically free when you live on a lumber yard.

As you see, lot of ifs... solar and wind are not constant either so you need a backup.

So I vote extortion and wood gasifyer; one makes you a total scum bag, the other requires a lumber yard.

Pick your poison, I prefer to be a scum bag for now and use the scum bag's money to get a gasifier... I already have the lumber yard  ;D

Work in IT and wait for your company to over buy on the Data Centers power, then ask permission to use the spare power.

While you are unlikely to find "free electricity" in any significant quantity if you are looking for large scale hosting we offer the lowest prices in the world and we're located right next door in Canada.

If you're curious you can check out our website @ www.greatnorthdata.com (http://www.greatnorthdata.com) and contact us for more information.

Your website would be a lot better if it gave any actually useful info. Quantified info, I mean; there's a lot of encouraging words and pictures on there but zero numbers.

We cater to medium and large scale miners and offer discounts for certain things like having a larger operation, pre-payment, etc. so our prices are very customer-specific.

If you show us your current hosting agreement we can beat it. Anyone who is interested can email us with the specifics of the hardware they are looking to host and we can provide a hosting package tailored to their needs.

I would agree with sidehack website is missing a lot. 

How can you possibly say you can beat all current hosting agreements? 

Depends how hard you run them, but 15-20.

Keep in mind that generators (unlike power supplies) run most efficiently at 100% load, so it doesn't hurt to run it full out.

Real free electricity has to be paid by someone else wether you unlawfully plug yourself to the public grid or your neighbourg's network or it is paid by your landlord, parents, friends or government.

You can invest in solar power , and after a one time investment, you can almost get free electricity for a long long time. Which is almost like fee.

I agree with this. Generators are not meant to run 24/7 for months on end. They are designed to run for a few hours when electricity goes out.

So this is interesting I actually have access to a lot of wood. Do you have some accounting around a gasifyer electric generator, how much are they, how much power do they generate, et cetera?

But wouldn't you be wasting more on burning woods and all the work,  than on just using electricity ?

Problems are getting a location and some places the "water rights". If I could, I would.

You would need a lot of manwork.

solar power or wind power, otherwise , some cheap contract in your zone, but to get a really free electricity, you need something abusive...which is illegal you know

the initial investment is too high to call it free
free i would call: zero point energy, energy from gasification of garbage....

SOlar power is not exactly free as no one knows how long they will be mining, so they might just be buying all those expensive panels, being not able to cover their cost.

Solar and hydro are 10-15 year investments and is difficult to justify just for mining. Good mining hardware is only useful for 18 months, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to install. (Although that portable hydro plant looked really cool.)

We're the cheapest hosting in the world. There were some people looking for numbers before. Prices start at $67.80/KW and go down from there for pre-payment and larger orders. (And if you want to talk really large orders, we're adding another MW in the next few months, and our bulk prices are also lowest in the world.)

We're located in Canada, carry insurance and have staff on site 24/7.

Run the numbers for your example setup. 

I see you have a rack of 10 Spondoolies.  Assuming they are SP30s, drawing 2400 watts each, that is 24kw per hour.  In a month that is 24kwx24hoursx30days=17280kwh.  I am guessing you are charging $67.80 Canadian per thousand kwh?  So cost for a month is 17.280*67.80= $1171.58, which is $39.05 per day. 

If your Spondoolies are pulling in 40 TH you are doing very well.  At current difficulty that would be about 0.44 BTC per day in a big pool.  If bitcoin price is over $100 you are (in theory) making money.

Am I missing anything?  Other than the fact that your power is 1/3 of the cost of power in Alberta, which makes me wonder a lot...

The upfront cost of solar power is a lot more than just $100. The normal house using solar power is a usual 15 year investment. It is very risky considering that btc has only been around for 6 years.

Lighting is the only free source of electricity I know of.

Of course there may be some minor issues with this source but I'm sure we can work it out ;)

Depends on the country. :P The US consumes 4,401,698GWh per year, or 15,846,112,800GJ. That's 502GJ per second, or 502GW. At 5 Gigajoules per lightning bolt, a lightning bolt would power the US for 1/100th of a second.

Uh, what?  Where?  Show me a picture.  I have never once seen a personal natural gas well.

I've toyed with the idea of a small solar setup only a couple KW, could use it for the rest of the house if I ever stopped mining, so wouldn't be a total loss or waste.

http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/%22natural-gas-well%22_att/days_sort/52.935397,-50.581055,18.521283,-140.405273_rect/3_zm/

Happy shopping and enjoy your relocation

50 hits, most false?
"Property has natural gas, well, and new solar panels."
"8 acres of pasture, fenced & cross fenced, 1600 sq.ft., brick, 3bed/2bath home with CH&A (new in 2010), natural gas, well w/new tank, woodburning fireplace..."
"Elevated residential lot with natural gas, well share and electric. "
"Property consists of 3 parcels with 17+ acres currently being farmed plus natural gas well, last used in 1982"
"Last lot in Sub, Located back of street on Cul De Sac. Paved Street, Underground Utilities, Natural Gas, Well/Septic Needed."

Etc, etc.

There are some, but it's hardly common.

I clicked a few of the houses at that link, every single one I clicked has the words "natural gas" and "well" in its description, but not a single one had a "natural gas well".  So I ask again, show me a picture of one.  I've driven across the US twice, I've been to a lot of places in this country, and never once seen a house with its own natural gas well.

Yes, You are right. Old hardware is only useful, If Electricity is not the paid one.

Okay...You sparked my curiosity. Why 1960 and prior???
[/quote]'

Most buildings built in the 70s or prior didn't have individual meters because electricity was super cheap in most of North America.

So there are buildings where you pay a fixed rate per year. At the end of the year they take the entire buildings bill and split it against all the occupants. So your 1-2KW miner won't really have much an effect against hundreds of other occupants.

It would be too expensive to re-wire all the electricals just to put in individual meters. I am sure these days "MOST" miners who are still mining with old hardware are only mining because they don't pay for electricity. I am pretty sure this is true for anyone out there still mining with GPUs since its next to impossible to make money on those if you pay for electricity.

Also most business and offices have really cheap or fixed electricity. So you can ask your boss if you are allowed. Most tech companies don't mind.

And if you are a student and live at a college or university you should have free electricity also.
[/quote]

I used to work at this company which used to pay my electricity bills. I think I could have taken advantage of that to run miners, but a sudden rise of cost might have tipped them off. So I didn't.
But Thats the only way I can think of getting free-electricity.

I'm actually shocked no one has made the joke about asking friedcat the best way to get free power yet. :)

I think you clicked on one house. The second one i clicked is this one:

http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/81905405_zpid/%22natural-gas-well%22_att/days_sort/52.935397,-50.581055,18.521283,-140.405273_rect/3_zm/

a simple google search will help you out. you are either the world's biggest skeptic or a troll.

The only thing I have ever had close is student housing.  It is more and more common with student appartments to include electricity with a cap price.  Mine it was included and the highest "peak" they would charge is 25 dollars extra.

That being said they are not built for mining or lots of watts.   Also I did not do it as It would have been kinda a ass move as my roommates would have paid higher price (25 dollars each) if I abused it.

If you use much more electricity than average in a student housing, you may be targeted for a verification that you are not growing marijuana plants.

The main thing they were worried about is damage to apartment.  So they would check a few times a semester to make sure the room's and things were not all torn up.

But if you did get a single without roommates I suppose you could have ran 4-5 110 circuits with miners.  But would not be able to do much as far as managing air to cool them.

Rather than free electricity, one could get cost efficient electricity. I live close to an industrial zone, so I just need to setup an electricity meter and pay for what is consuming to the landlord, pretty cheap energy!

I don't agree with the other methods that not seem ethical.

Back in college I had a similar option too, but the problem was that the power that could be drawn wasn't a lot. The whole system used to trip everytime I connected something like a Heater. So as for miners, thats the last thing I would expect to be able to use on those systems.

Don't know how the 110V grid is made in the States, but in the EU they use 220V 10A breakers (usually 2 per room - one for outlets and one for the lights). I investigated because my PC used to trip these every few days.
It would be hard run anything more than a single S4 in there.

Varies GREATLY.  It all depends on your electrician and location.  I am lucky that I live on a farm and have two lines going to my house.    I was over 12Kw during winter mining.  But now moving to summer mining have to go a little smaller.

I don't know what we would say normal is.  It varies so much.

I was talking about typical dorm rooms, as I agree with @jmintuck that in most cases it's impossible to mine there. Surely at home you can have anything you like. This crazy Brit for instance has a 100A socket in his basement just for fun (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMH2t34Rw3E).
Were you using the miners to heat the house? All this excess heat might be great for growing plants in winter.

Back in 2012 I used to mine in a small factory, with business electricity contract, mined for 9 months 24/7 with some ASICs at 0$. Now it's very hard, almost impossible to find free electricity, you should do business with someone in China or other countries where electricity is cheap.

China is becoming more and more popular.  But there are some places in US with very low electricity price aswell.

If you want to manage a big mining farm, china is the best place. You don't even need to move the ASICs out of china border, and workers cost is low

Of course, you'd just have to do the math and probably run the miners in a closed loop, because you'd need a higher pressure in the boiler. It would be good to install a heat pump to make it more efficient.
The reason why people aren't doing it is probably due to the short life of their miners. You rarely use the same units for more than a year so it's not worth it.

That is the big problem with integrating miners into something big. The only thing you really can do easily is in winter use as a space heater.  With moving around to heat house there is no additional cost, just time to find best way to use the heat.

http://themindunleashed.org/2013/10/multiple-scientists-confirm-reality-of.html

It is possible, but the waste fats would have to be filtered, and the fats would have to be warmed to lower its density to the equivalent of diesel, and then under any circumstance could the generate be shutdown for a long period of time with the fats, otherwise once the fats cool down they increase in viscosity making the generator nearly impossible to run again. so before shutdown it would be needed to switch to diesel, make sure there is no fat on the fuel lines and then shutdown.
Also the fats would have to be free of contaminants that can not be filtered such as acids.

 

I don't have numbers, but Australia is said to have very cheap electricity.

Where's yours?  Mine's in Missouri.

Not to many states away.  Can I ask why  price electricity you are getting in Missouri.

Here at the store, I'm getting .0751/kwh after taxes and such.

I think the gasifier+generator would be the best (cheapest) option. As long as you have access to wood, which you should always be able to find on craigslist, the only real investment would be the generator. Except for time, of course. (just remember, it take somewhere around 25 lbs. of wood to make a gallon of gas) This is the idea my buddy and I are working on now. The government even tried to help us out. http://www.build-a-gasifier.com/fema-gasifier-plans/

I am in agreement somewhat and I have lots of wood, have you run any financial analysis yet?

Very interesting, I aswell would like to see finance on wood to electricity on start up cost

Sent them an email out of curiosity, their rates are very respectful @ $63/khw/mo  month to month too
They were very responsive ... but a huge red flag went up when I was told I would be unable to access my rigs remotely. =( Im not sure if thats the norm in ASIC hosting but... the ones Ive looked into all offered remote access control of my miner.
In short, its very uncomfortable being told I would have no way to tell if my equipment was mining or not.

Thank you for your interest. Sorry that we do not offer direct access to your miner. It is simply too much of a security risk for us. We could probably write a book on the ways people have tried to illegally access our mine. None have been successful, and we intend to keep it that way.

And you can tell your equipment is mining from the mining pool you choose.

There are plenty of mines that offer access, they just can't match out prices. We would offer access for an order large enough that justified a separate internet connection.

Sorry to set off red flags. We can provide proof of insurance, our corporate registration, ID for our CEO etc. in order to reassure anyone interested.

You can find online these portable solar panels. They look like large printers. However, these can power 1 or maybe 2 S5 miners max and cost a lot of money.

found this

"Interplanetary satellites that fly toward planets such as Jupiter and Saturn are so far away from the sun that they cannot use solar panels to generate electricity. These satellites use RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) to generate their power. An RTG uses radioactive material (like plutonium) to generate heat, and thermocouples convert the heat to electricity. RTGs have no moving parts, so they are reliable, and the radioactive material generates heat for many years."

but you need radioactive materials, maybe it can work in a small amount without being unsafe

there is a way to convert the heat from device that use electricity, to electricity again? i think it may be against the thermodynamic law

Your country perhaps is China.??? where government officials shall be free things including diamond , gold,....

The GPHS-RTG model used in most recent missions uses 7.8kg of Pu-238 and generates 300W of electricity. If you can find 35lbs of plutonium, you could power an S5 this way using two of them. Of course, rather than using them to power an S5 you might want to sell them to NASA for $50M each.

You can recover heat from a device using the same effect, but you need a temperature differential across your recovery device. Essentially, you do so at the cost of making the miner run hotter all else being equal.

that's interesting, are 35lb of plutonium dangerous for your healthy, i mean you can just use them like they are aluminium or something

so if i can find a ay to run the mine hotter and then stop it to refrigerate, and repeat again it would be possible?

If you have 35lb of plutonium, you should bail on the whole Bitcoin thing and look for buyers of your plutonium. Way big profit there.

Plutonium? Is this back to the future? lol :D

Gasifiers are a proven technology, and they work extremely well.
I have years of research and dev on home builds. It takes skill in welding fabrication, small engine repair, electrical knowledge and alot of patience...
But it's very rewarding. There are many places which sell units ready to operate, but you will pay dearly for them.
good luck.

Have you built one, can you give some more details about them? Why do you think they work extremely well, what are your examples. 

The idea is actually very good and you can build this thing from scrap.
Here's a good video that should explain all the basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6e3CprVTi8


It's radioactive, figure it out ;P

Those plutonium generators were being used in the Soviet era and they are completely safe and self running. The fuel capsule is enclosed in a shell cooled by a closed loop. You can find a lot of them being sold for scrap in Russia or just lying around, rusting away.

http://i044.radikal.ru/1105/e3/1ec9ff2a7036.jpg