Direct overhead power lines supplied the 200,000 plus volts. Like I said these tests were done for the power company which meant they supplied the main. Also there are many tools that measure voltage in excess of 200,000 volts. Yes all of this gear used ground rods and all gear was bonded to ground. Obviously the voltage spike was drain to ground but the fact that the two prices survived and the devices on the other end only saw 138v from the hit. Take as you want but these are facts

Centralization, the intended vs realized nature of the network, these are certainly factors that will influence the acceptance/adoption/future of Bitcoin.  

I still get the feeling that (myself included) everyone is focused on the short term, where everything is mining reward centric.  Granted, this makes sense for anyone with money at stake, it is the short term that is making or breaking our investments.  

But I am curious about the long game here.  Lot's of folks talk about "to the moon" and "Bitcoin can change the world". From a financial perspective, some seem to feel like selling bitcoins at any price that is foreseeable in the near future would be foolish, because it is bound to appreciate greatly as the network grows and becomes more heavily utilized by the general population.   I am interested in a technical analysis of mining from that perspective, one whose primary source of revenue stems from transaction fees, not mining rewards.

Certainly, price increases will prolong the effective relevance of mining reward revenue.  But eventually, it will be transaction volume/fee percentage that caps mining revenue.  If we ever get to that point, a point of widespread adoption, I think it is a reasonable assumption that price will have had to come to some level of stability. I doubt merchants will accept bitcoin on a globally significant scale without price stability, barring some instant, free/low cost, exchange mechanism for converting BTC to fiat.  

So with the assumption that you reach a point where the price ceases to increase drastically.  And also assuming that by that time, the network has shifted to operate on the lowest cost power available, you are left with two basic variables.  Revenue from network usage vs Cost of operating the network at a given hash-rate.   This is obviously an oversimplification, as the hash rate will probably influence the confidence in the network, and hence tie back into its usage/overall revenue.  

One of these evenings maybe I will do some research and try to come up with some data based numbers, but basically:

1) Assume Bitcoin grows to handle some X % of global economic transactions (X needs to be derived from some realistic source)
2) Define some upper limit Y of % Fee that miners can expect to be paid for handling the transactions (compared against current fees for other payment methods)
3) Assume power costs are condensed down to some minimum, perhaps we call it $0.01/kWh
4) Assume we start coming up against some asymptotic efficiency limit of silicon/efficiency (this number would probably overestimate efficiency, but that leads to a more conservative model)

It should be possible to come up with some model that gives upper and lower bounds to theoretically profitable network hash rate, given a total $ amount of network usage.

If this model was put into some sort of iterative simulation, it might even be fun to integrate other factors in adjusting the bounds.
For example, if globally the network has a total potential hash rate of 10 Exa, but only 4 Exa is predicted to be viable, the existence of the remaining 6 Exa powered down represents a security risk, and potentially negative impact on network usage.

Long winded, but I am just really interested in the long term aspects of mining.  I have my $5k tied up in my little apartment experiment, and it may or may not ROI.  But whats really interesting to me is if the mining sector is really aligned with the future of Bitcoin, or if mining is simply a gold rush right now, with near sighted goals neglecting to account for the long term viability of the network.  

this will help you: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1194785

I haven't got an S7 myself, but as far as i understand, you only need the S7 + a PSU

Make sure you do a profitablity calculation, and read up on the noise, heat, maintenance,... before you start mining!

Re container: probably a good deal if it costs 1-2mil and you have spare 2MW available.
I calculate that with halving coming and assuming just 2X difficulty increase until july 1 and 2X difficulty increase from July1 to Dec31 maximum bitcoin revenue would be somewhere between $4-5 mil in 12mo and ~$0.9-1.8 mil in electricity cost per year (first number for $0.05/kwh and second for $0.1/kwh).
However, who knows how much difficulty will increase. On the upside, price can increase and bail you out.
I wonder if anybody on the forum have access to 2mW?

BAMM - a WORKING 16 nm full custom ASIC chip @TSMC ! 5x more efficient than our 28nm. Sales to public start shorlty. Decentralize @Bitcoin !

IBM recently announced that it has recreated the Silicon substructure used in making processors. Currently silicon can go to 10 nano meters but IBM's can go to 8nm with there new silicon.