It will take a HUGE investment in solar before you will see a profit on this. How did you not do the math BEFORE getting the bill?
I had him call So Cal Edison to get an idea of what a future bill would be, with him telling them the usage he was going to be doing, and they told him it would prolly double his previous bills, so we logically figured about $200/mo. Their guesstimate was obviously way off.
Solar may help for 6 hours a day but you still need to buy power for the other 75% of the time. So you could assume the electricity cost would only fall to $500*0.75 or about $375 per month with solar panels.
An alternative would be to use solar panels to just run the miners for 6 or so hours a day when the sun is shining.
While in theory you could erect say 8,000 watts of solar panels and use batteries to run off solar all the time the experience of others is that this is not cost effective. Miners draw too much power.
Also $500 of electricity over a month for four S3s seems high. It is just over $16 a day or 67 cents per hour. As 4 S3s draw about 1,400 Watts your electricity cost is close to 50 cents per KWh which seems high. As mining with an S3 currently only earns about 30 cents per KWh you are not even mining the cost of your electricity.
So Cal Edison uses tiered rates, which may be the reason for the high end cost.
I thought this but realized he must of used ac to cool off the heat they made.
Hey op what batch did you buy and how long have they been sitting idle?
To the op southern ca charges insane power prices. Try to find a host in the state of Washington.
They were batch 5 IIRC, and only used for about 5 weeks or so, and not overclocked.
If you're interested, 4 miners, two 1,000 watt P/S and two Antminer switches, all in original boxes.
Make me an offer I can't refuse, lol.
I also want to thank ya'all for the information you've posted. Always a learning experience, even at
my crusty old age, eh eh.