Bitcoin Forum

Here is an interesting concept I was thinking about.

So we all know that the primary cost of the mining rig is the energy. For most, this is make or break. If the energy is too much you won't make any money. To solve this issue how about running the rig on renewable energy.

There are lots of places around the world that have awesome renewable energy resources that aren't tapped. Most of these resources aren't tapped because with renewable energy you need to build transmission lines so only the big renewable energy projects get developed. With running a rig there is no need for transmission line. Simply set up your renewable energy generators, connect to some transformers/power conditioning/battery then connect your rig to that. The ideal energy source would be a micro hydro setup that produces a couple KWs. If you are in a remote location then you can use satellite internet to connect to the internet.

Seems like a realistic idea if you live in a remote location.

You mean like this: https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16377.0

Yes but not using solar (equipment is too expensive). Wind might work but you'll have to configure the rig to adjust to changing power conditions plus having your rig sitting idol because not enough juice could be a problem. I think the best setup is something that can produce cheap renewable energy reliable and thats microhydro.

There could also be some other potential energy sources:
geothermal - using a Stirling engine near some sort of heat vent (ie. a hotspring) however the ideal location would be difficult to find (maybe in iceland?). Plus you have to get the rights to exploit said hotspring. Lots of these locations are considered tourist attractions or protected under environmental laws.
Wood - Using Stirling engine to power a generator. Works best in some location where wood is free. I know there are some beaches that get tons of beach wood so you can collect as much as you want. Could be a pain in the ass, after a while though.  

So I think the best source is hydro power or geothermal.

Solar and wind make more sense than geothermal and hydro, simply because of their abundance and lack of needing rights to tap. Sun and wind are everywhere, geothermal and high volume flowing water are not.

I suppose if you happen to be living right on top of a geothermal source, or next to a raging river, that would be a fine option, if you're not one of the incredibly tiny portion that does then it might be a bit harder.

I suppose mining on one of these sources makes sense on some level, but their costs and hassle make them a large project with iffy return ratios. Though obviously they've side benefits to them outside of mining (like not raping the earth with all this power consumption and whatnot), except for burning wood. That's just incredibly wasteful.

Yes there are logistic issues with hydro and geothermal but those seem the most realistic for 24/7 operation. The next best option would be wind power in some location where there is almost constant wind.

If people could do it right now (regardless of bitcoin) they would. Who wouldn't want to save money and have their tv/computer run for free?

Problem is it costs $1000s, you don't see the money for 5-10-15 years, and that's with huge tax breaks.

Energy is cheap and until it's no longer cheap there's not a lot of motivation to change.

how about windgenerators?

My mining is roughly 40% renewable energy, mostly hydro and a bit of wind.

the other 60% is mostly coal, with a side of peaking natural gas.

I think you just summed up the whole problem with renewable energy right there. It doesn't matter how efficient we can make solar/wind/hydro/anyrenewable as long as fossil fuels are cheaper. I'm just wondering when renewable will be cheaper, so we can finally realize how idiotic the fossil fuels are, like lead paint, Radium Revigators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Ore_Revigator), and asbestos.

Are those sources under your control, or is that just the layout spread of your local power concern?


Well, it would help if renewables got a fraction of the money being pumped into fossil fuels. Both in terms of research and just materials demand. Doesn't help that China is sitting on top of 90% of the production of REM, and have put a squeeze on exports either. The world needs to grow up and stop being a little baby.

local power concern.

who the hell has their own coal generator?

Using 100% renewable energy without any CO2 emissions here, but I am thinking about moving to other sources. Renewable isn't enough, it should have minimum (negative) impact on nature. Currently I am trying to figure out which source is the best to achieve this.

Why not just rent space at a local power generator (hydro)?  The owner/operator would eagerly rent you space and sell you very very cheap electricity...

This is especially true for countries outside of U.S. where everyone is looking for extra income.

The other option is to produce your own electricity and sell back to the grid.  Then, your per Kw cost could be 0.  The only problem with this option is how much is the capital expense?  If we had solar technology that was much more efficient than it is today, this would work nicely.

Use 100% renewable to run a huge bitcoin farm, then funnel all the excess heat into a small steam turbine to run a desalinzation plant. No co2 and you even make some fresh water. Yay!

Oh man.

If you had the money to buy into solar or wind generation you'd be much better off to put it into more GPUs instead. Other than bragging rights to say you are "totally renewable" there's no way it would be profitable and not very earth friendly either.

You may be able to get your electric for free after you invest in the gear but the up front costs both in money and environmental impact of equipment would exceed the savings for quite some time. Probably you would have to keep adding more solar/wind to keep up with increasing difficulty and it would continually get harder to realize any payback.

No, if you want to save the environment then don't start mining.
Just like in the real world with coal.

In Texas Green Mountain Energy supplies wind generated power. Since power is deregulated there, one can use this company.
http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/ (http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/)
IMHO this is a nice way to support renewable energy without capital investment.

I agree. Great idea, if you live in Texas.

I live in Texas, and GME is more expensive to use in most places. I've lived in 3 areas in Texas since GME came on the scene a decade ago. It was .04 (actual .0004) pkw more expensive, then, and .03 more expensive where I live now. (deep south)

I am thinking of this operation more of a business venture/investment opportunity. With that being said you have to think of it in that way. Also most people don't use renewable now because their renewable sources aren't very good. Location is key especially with geothermal and hydro.

Yes it can be expensive to build but as I have said, this is more of an investment.

It doesn't matter if energy is cheap right now. When it comes to bitcoin you have to be able to beat people who are operating at the cheapest price even if its 3-4c/kwh.

Its possible but you have to understand that most large hydro is already connected to the grid. So why sell your energy for 1c/kwh when you can sell it to the grid for 5-6c/kwh? The only place that would work is in locations where there is no large market for energy like in some African village or something. Most of those microhydro projects were built by humanitarian groups and given to the tribe. But if you showed up and said, "hey, I'll pay you 1c/kwh for your excess energy." Then they would gladly jump at the offer because at their current situation NO ONE can afford to buy energy.

For the second statement that is ASSUMING you are connected to the grid in the first place. what if you are out in the Alaskan outback and you have a micro hydro project? Do you think you will be connected to the grid? Absolutely not. Those are the types of locations I am talking about. Some river/stream that is in the middle of no where but has the potential to generate 50-100kwh. A normal utility would not develop the resource because they would have to build a super expensive transmission line to bring the power to the market. So no one invests to build the hydro power station. These are the types of locations I am talking about.

The engineering would be pretty simple to do. The bigger problem is getting right of use permits and agreements from landowners. It would be better done in 3rd world countries rather than 1st world countries who are rather anti-growth at the present state.

For myself, right now I have most of money parked in the stock market making 3-5%/year. If I could invest in this project and get a return of 20-30% on my money then it would be well worth the risks.

HAHA sterling engine:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/BetaStirlingTG4web.jpg

You are easily amused :D

Sorry, but that's nonsense. Bitcoin is actually a better way to save the environment than paper money is.

Except you don't have a choice about paper money - it's already here.
You're simply adding to the wasted energy not removing it.

well bitcoin has the potential to replace paper money.

Also I'd like to inform everyone that running the rig on renewable energy is not about being environmentally friendly. Its all about the economics of it. Why buy energy when you can get it for free (from untapped renewable energy resources).

Because from a business perspective alone there are almost no options where alternative forms of energy are preferrable, excepting rare cases like being out in the wilderness of who-knows-where by yourself where costs of transmission are prohibitive and you can tap some natural resource.

For the majority of folk however looking PURELY at business side renewable is not cost-effective. If it were, everyone would have it. Even as "free energy" the cost for equipment and set up and all that whatnot puts the cost / watt generated higher than traditional forms of energy.

That's why you have to include other concerns, the environment, your local health concern, future resource supply shifts, etc. into the mix. But just looking at buying energy vs, generating it? You lose.

because the equipment to harvest said untapped renewable energy resources is decidedly non-free.

There was a video on Digg.com (or slashdot, dont remember) about a week ago about this new composite alloy that has no magnetic properties....unit it absorbs heat, then it is like a super magnet. Thus, making a heat powered magnetic motor.

here is the text article, google for the video

http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/56965-multiferroic-alloy-turns-waste-heat-to-energy

As with all in-development technology, this is decidedly cool, but we'll see what the real world practical applications actually end up being. It might cost $10,000 / gram, and see no actual use, or it might not scale, or who knows.

Always nice to keep an eyeon these things though. Would be nice if this damn oven room was producing the electricity it needed to run. Also if it absorbs heat it can used as a cooler, yay.

The raw materials are not crazily expensive anyway, cobalt is the most expensive thing in there (~$40/lb currently) but there's not too much of it. Nickel and tin are in the $10-12 range and manganese is dirt cheap in comparison.

I run my rigs on 100% hydroelectric power. And not only that, the dam is so close I could run my own extension cord to it... or, well, at least I can get there and back in a two hour walk.

I pay about 1% extra per kW/h for that. But I guess in reality that mostly means someone else pays 1% less for dirty power...

True but you would amortize the cost over xyz years and deduct the cost.

Is that what Bender has? (Futurama)

Actually don't laugh. A mining card will convert over 90% of it's spent energy as heat. You can run a stirling engine outside your PC case to recover 40-50% of the wasted heat as mechanical work or oscillating energy then convert that into electricity and back into the power supply :D

It also doubles as automatically tuned cooling installation.

 ???. Atomic cost is not the decider of materials cost. The materials that make up a diamond are carbon atoms, I could probably get those for free. It's the process of shaping those carbon atoms into a diamond which is difficult, and yields a higher price than carbon alone.

There is no mention of the process used to form this new item, whether it is complex or simple, energy intensive or relaxed, whether it can be done only on small scales or whether industrial scaling can be done. These are all considerations of cost beyond materials. This is why so many awesome things come out of the lab but fail to find any traction in the real world.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is not the sterling engine subject to carnot efficiency? 1- T_C / T_H ? Assuming you have something like ambient temp for T_C, and an efficient heat exchange between cards and whatever reservoir you are using for your sterling engine, I don't see how you would get more than 20% efficiency from a sterling engine even in the most extremely hypothetically favorable case.

So reclaiming 20% of otherwise wasted energy is a worthless waste of time? Shit guys we better tell... Well shit, everyone. Because EVERY COMPANY IN THE WORLD would jump on a chance to recoup 20% of otherwise unavoidable wastes, assuming the buy-in isn't absurdly high.

I don't know if a sterling engine WOULD work well or not but it's worth a crack and if someone would like to experiment with it, I'm not going to call them an idiot because my gedanken experiment couldn't achieve better than 20% efficiency.

Great way to reply as a total douche to someone providing the correct math being the sterling engine. Good thing not everyone treats engineers like you do.

All I'm saying is that if someone can so much as find a way to make waste heat run even a single case fan they should do it and see if they can make it profitable. What would we all be doing right now if Satoshi thought he had a great idea but decided it probably wouldn't work and never published?

Feel free to quote where I said it was a worthless waste of time. Or where I called someone an idiot. Quoting this post doesn't count.

You're an idiot.

I was merely questioning his statement, asking where his numbers were from, when the theoretical maximum (carnot himself understood that no such engine can even exist) is half of the claimed numbers. In all likelihood you will get a fraction of that value in a real world scenario.

I will add to boot that the buy-in will be absurdly high for a small user to find a custom sterling engine of suitable size, heat transfer setup and whatnot, unless you are running a massive mining cluster. I'm not saying that it isn't worth playing with, or that seeing someone set one up wouldn't be quite interesting. But don't expect that anyone can just jump on board and cool their 4 radeon 5870s while dropping their power bill in half at little to no cost.

Yeah, and payback usually takes 20-40 years for backyard solar or wind equipment.  Which probably means, you'll never make your money back (since the equipment is likely to break down and/or need servicing in that time, which pushes back the payback period further, etc).

This is correct. Please consider that you also get the benefit of active cooling, thus you do not require additional installations and costs for cooling your rigs if you have access to outside atmosphere. You may also supplement the cooling with some of the recycled energy. Also, about your percentage, did you use 20% as recovered electrical power or 20% as recovered energy?

I simply calculated the efficiency of the engine using carnots theoretical limit, ambient temp (estimated at 22C) as your cold reservoir, and a small hot reservoir that equalizes its temperature at about 90C, I feel these to be reasonable if not generous numbers. This should be equivalent to the ratio of Work_Done / Heat_into_System however.

In my imaginings you would couple the hot side to some sort of active water cooling for the cards, but you may have a more efficient method in mind to lower cost.

Wow, hostile.

I *do* understand your point y'know... At the temperature differential between the surface of my GPU and room temperature in my apartment maximum Carnot efficiency is quite low, around 23.3%. I'm also aware that you're extremely lucky to capture even half of that with a stirling or any kind of thermal engine, thus converting 11.65% of waste heat back into energy. Still, with a 5970 converting almost 300 watts into heat at very high efficiency, recovering a mere 11.65% of that would result in recovering almost 35 watts. Combine this with the fact that this 35 watts recovered also equals 35 watts (~119.4 BTU/H) of heat that I don't have to air-condition away and my actual savings is nearly 50 watts. Granted at my local electric rates this is only about $4.06 savings per month per card but it also means a fair amount of heat that I no longer have to deal with at *all* and beyond a certain scale operation, it'd certainly be worth it.

Thanks for calling me an idiot, I usually take it as a sign that I'm at least doing something interesting enough to piss someone off.

I'm not trying to be hostile, just speaking the truth.  I get tired of all the lies about green energy that are spread around.

I think he was misquoting and intended to reply to me instead. I was hostile to his snarky dickhead reply, and he seems surprised by that. I don't think your more calm normal responses are interpreted as hostile.

If you can generate your own electricity why bother with mining?  I thought about adding solar Panels to my home too compensate for the mining rigs, then thought why not just add more panels and sell electricity back to  the power company?  No reason to bother with a mining rig right?  turns out eh cost of a decently large solar installation, say 5Kw is a lot of money even if the tax rebate is included and the Florida incentives are added in.

If you can't build your own silicon GPU and silicon solar cells, why bother with mining :D

Not all states allow for resale of electricity to the grid. There are some states that have a "zero-net" energy policy, they'll allow you to generate your own energy, consume and resell but you can't profit from it, the best you can do is a $0 energy bill.

But yeah, solar energy ain't cheap regardless. As I said, if alternatives were really competitive or superior, they'd have taken over traditional. There are other benefits however, so they aren't a totally dead idea.

I don't see the universal validity of your argument.
If you'd happen to need a lot of warm (not hot, process) water, you could use a water cooled mining rig to heat that water.
So instead of purchasing energy to solely heat your water, you additionally generate bitcoins with it.
Well, electrically, that is.
Anyway, the price difference between electrical heating and gas (or oil or whatever other fuel) heating is the cost for mining.

Yes solar and wind are expensive hence the reason I'd rather use micro-hydro. Currently that's the cheapest form of energy I know of.

Also micro-hydro not that expensive to install. All you need is some plastic pipes connected to a generator for a BASIC setup. The real issue is finding a good location where you could install the micro hydro.