Using renewable energy to mine?

[bcpokey]

I mean buying something like this: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1472pcs-x-3-95Watt-B-grade-156mm-x-156mm-6-x-6-Poly-solar-cells/543644854.html

and manually soldering them all together, building/sealing enclosures, and wiring them up yourself.

$1500 for the panels, and I'm guessing ~$2500 for all the other materials (electrical, frames, glass, sealant, etc). About 4kUSD for ~5kwh of panels. My house sits at the top of a hill in Maine, and the back roof faces south and has almost continuous sunshine all day. It's ideal for solar, but I don't mind putting the man hours into lowering the initial investment and getting into it as cheap as I can.

Ah China, guess you can get everything from that whacky country these days.

Do you have enough space for all this? Not sure what your final power plan is, but these cells are rated at .613V, assuming you want 12V DC that's still ~20 cells in series, or 10' x 6" (you could make smaller panels and hook those up in series of course), 7kW (5000 kwh / month) of 12V power would require a huge number of 10'x6" strips. Unless you meant 5000 kwh / yr, which would definitely be more doable.

Umm you don't need to run a 20x1 cell grid just to get 20 panels all in series. You can do a 5x4 cell grid, and still keep them in series. This gives you about a 3'x4' panel, and I got plenty of space for 30-40 of such panels, between my house, and my 2 car garage next to the house (whose roof is facing south as well).

Yes, obviously you do not need to make it 20x1, nor would anyone do that. It was simply a simplest case example to explain sizing issues.

The real world scenario would actually be a > 12V cluster (closer to 15-17V for actual usage) of cells in your panel running in tandem with other modules through a charge controller into whatever system you're running off, such that all panels can work efficiently (same output for all series connections). The calculations are then done with Solar-Hours available to you, to garner expected kwh, but that's more than I cared to do in a simple forum post, so I left it to you to figure that out.

Edit: not sure why I originally read 5000kwh, must have been late. 5kwh is easy (even per day), basically no power at all. Can do that without using much of a fraction of your roof. You certainly don't need 1500 cells to do that.

[hardcore-fs]

Already have this sussed.... for FREEE

The local electricity company wanted to promote "green energy",  needed  'test sites'.

So I popped off a proposal about " The solution to conversion inefficiencies in green energy power storage solutions".

Well their PR & engineering departments are so worked up  it turned into  spunkfest.

Should have their engineers here on Thursday, I'm going to be doing a photo shoot.

Seems it *may* be more efficient to turn "waste" electricity into bit coins, than try to store it physically.

HC....

[crazyates]

Edit: not sure why I originally read 5000kwh, must have been late. 5kwh is easy (even per day), basically no power at all. Can do that without using much of a fraction of your roof. You certainly don't need 1500 cells to do that.

Sorry for the clarification, but the 1500 panels would be good for about 5kw, and living in Southern Maine, I'd get about 4-5 hours of peak sunlight per day. I'd be willing to call it ~20kwh per day.

I've had sub 2 thousand watts orders of panels delivered to my house for under $1/watt, anybody who thinks they are going to build them cheaper than that is insane.  You can get solar laminates for $.64/watt right now and I've seen $.50/w in the past, which supposedly can be used without a frame. Or frame them, and still come out ahead of DIY panels

And where are you ordering these? Please, do share.

[reyals]

I've had sub 2 thousand watts orders of panels delivered to my house for under $1/watt, anybody who thinks they are going to build them cheaper than that is insane.  You can get solar laminates for $.64/watt right now and I've seen $.50/w in the past, which supposedly can be used without a frame. Or frame them, and still come out ahead of DIY panels

And where are you ordering these? Please, do share.

Yah I'd be interested to know as well...  I got mine for a bit under $2/watt and I've seen down to about $1.5/watt retail but sub $1 delivered?  I'd probably build out some capacity if I could get some of those

[bcpokey]

Edit: not sure why I originally read 5000kwh, must have been late. 5kwh is easy (even per day), basically no power at all. Can do that without using much of a fraction of your roof. You certainly don't need 1500 cells to do that.

Sorry for the clarification, but the 1500 panels would be good for about 5kw, and living in Southern Maine, I'd get about 4-5 hours of peak sunlight per day. I'd be willing to call it ~20kwh per day.

I've had sub 2 thousand watts orders of panels delivered to my house for under $1/watt, anybody who thinks they are going to build them cheaper than that is insane.  You can get solar laminates for $.64/watt right now and I've seen $.50/w in the past, which supposedly can be used without a frame. Or frame them, and still come out ahead of DIY panels

And where are you ordering these? Please, do share.

Ah, you meant kW, your post originally said kWh, leading me down a rabbit hole. Well fair enough, assuming you have sufficient space for all these panels, 5kW seems reasonable. Most solar maps list maine at 3 - 3.5 hours though (yearly average).

[crazyates]

Edit: not sure why I originally read 5000kwh, must have been late. 5kwh is easy (even per day), basically no power at all. Can do that without using much of a fraction of your roof. You certainly don't need 1500 cells to do that.

Sorry for the clarification, but the 1500 panels would be good for about 5kw, and living in Southern Maine, I'd get about 4-5 hours of peak sunlight per day. I'd be willing to call it ~20kwh per day.

I've had sub 2 thousand watts orders of panels delivered to my house for under $1/watt, anybody who thinks they are going to build them cheaper than that is insane.  You can get solar laminates for $.64/watt right now and I've seen $.50/w in the past, which supposedly can be used without a frame. Or frame them, and still come out ahead of DIY panels

And where are you ordering these? Please, do share.

Ah, you meant kW, your post originally said kWh, leading me down a rabbit hole. Well fair enough, assuming you have sufficient space for all these panels, 5kW seems reasonable. Most solar maps list maine at 3 - 3.5 hours though (yearly average).

Ya sorry for the confusion. One little letter can make a world of difference.  Yes we should get anywhere from 3-4 hours of peak sunlight, but as I said, we're at the top of a hill, with no trees in the way, and our roof is almost the perfect angle and direction.

[AmpEater]

No big secret, eBay. Sunelec.com also has good prices.

http://search.ebay.com/?sass=fred480v&ht=-1

Now there are some 275 watt panels for $.75/watt plus shipping, which seems to be the same no matter how many watts you buy, around $250 IIRC.  So 2000w delivered for around $1750, 10,000w for $7750.

[hardcore-fs]

All the prices you see from China , are actually bullshit high......

They actually pay less than 20 cents US for these cells, most of which are throwback defectives from the LED/outdoor lighting market.
Then you have the other fuckwhits, actually assembling the cells in shitty lighting factories ,so the quality is all over the place.
I have a friend who owns one of the biggest LED manufacturing plants in Shenzhen, he recently moved into  making solar cells and is just finishing off a new factory.

So everyone and his dog, fancies themselves as being solar lighting experts, whilst most are just a couple of blokes hand building this shite.

[Lethn]

I just saw this company on CNBC which sells a stove that can charge up iphones and stuff, looks pretty experimental so far but I thought it looked interesting, Jim Cramer was all giddy about it lmao, don't like the guy very much but he does get it right occasionally for some reason.

http://biolitestove.com/

[reyals]

No big secret, eBay. Sunelec.com also has good prices.

http://search.ebay.com/?sass=fred480v&ht=-1

Now there are some 275 watt panels for $.75/watt plus shipping, which seems to be the same no matter how many watts you buy, around $250 IIRC.  So 2000w delivered for around $1750, 10,000w for $7750.

Which brand are you using?  I'd worry about the quality when something is suppose to last 25 years

I just saw this company on CNBC which sells a stove that can charge up iphones and stuff, looks pretty experimental so far but I thought it looked interesting, Jim Cramer was all giddy about it lmao, don't like the guy very much but he does get it right occasionally for some reason.

http://biolitestove.com/

That's actually pretty cute.  But looks like it can supply only 2 watts.... which really is even less then usb's spec of 500ma.
So neat gimmick but nothing terribly amazing.

[bcpokey]

It says Peak 4W, continuous 2W, so... take as you will.

I wouldn't go heavily investing in them myself, they've taken the existing "high efficiency stove" which was developed as a give-away to help people in 3rd world countries be able to extend their fuel (wood) and lower their carbon emissions, and slapped on some sort of Thermal generator. Why I don't think that will make them take off, is that most 1st world campers, the ones able to afford $150 for a stove, do not cook using wood, they likely bring a controlled source like propane. The people who really need the extended wood-burning efficiency have absolutely no need for USB charging for iPods, nor can they really afford $150 for a stove that other organizations are trying to get funding to give away.

So I expect it to find some traction as a novelty but not as a serious product.

[AmpEater]

If you gasify your wood and then feed that into a engine running a generator you can get 1 kwh per kg of wood.  Plus 2kwh of heat split between the engine coolant and exhaust. 

If you have a supply of wood waste, or already heat with wood by just burning it, then you could get free power with some pretty simple DIY. 

[Bitcoin Oz]

I have a solar panel I hooked up to an old android phone which sits in the shed mining litecoins 

[Lethn]

LOL I think I'm getting obsessive about Science now, I know fuck all about equations etc. but I find it really interesting, I wonder if it's possible to just experiment with this stuff through trial and error? Here's something I found on Thorium Liquid Fueled Reactors just now.

http://slowfacts.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/thorium-nuclear-reactors/

Imagine having one of these babies hooked up to a Bitcoin farm ..... I think I could build that actually with my limited knowledge of welding... All I'd need is some Thorium.....

[exotime]

If you're capable of building your own home reactor - all issues aside - you've got better ways of earning money/bitcoins than by using that energy to mine, me thinks...

[Lethn]

Never tried it before but it sounds like fun lol The problem with me is I have plenty of ideas I want to try but I need my own plot of land and a bit of cash to do it, so that's what I'm working on right now, trouble is that the coming depression is making things pretty difficult.

[Luno]

Lol Lethn, Thorium, same ball park as Uranium. Try to some of that on line. You'll get a personal delivery.

[Lethn]

LMAO I'll get the Ministry of Defence visiting me if I try that

[bcpokey]

Google nuclear boyscout before you try to build a reactor for your rigs.

[Lethn]

Yeah that's the only trouble, how to deal with radiation, that stuffs pretty nasty so I'll take a lot of time thinking about that before I actually try anything, the thing is though, if the government are going to be obsessed with weaponry then who else is going to go after the stuff that isn't as harmful?