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July 07, 2015, 12:37:37 AM |
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I have some experience in hosting, so let me review this operation. North Carolina... I'd heard they were doing this but I figured they would realize this was a stupid idea.
1) Hot climate? Check
2) Non-competitive electricity price? Check
3) Amateur layout of their equipment? Check
We'll they're screwed.
Let's forget about the cost of that equipment. They'll burn that equipment out faster cooling like that and from what I can gather electricity is more than 6 cents USD/kwh. (I looked at some suppliers online, appeared to be 5.5 cents/kwh plus tax, demand and service charges.) Those Spondoolies machines make 16 cents/kw right now. I'd guess that after overhead, supplies and a couple of employees they're in for at least 3 more cents/kwh. So they're burning 9 cents/kwh now. So a 75% rise in difficulty and they're basically underwater at this price. We're going to see 5% rise on difficulty in a few days. And based on what i see, I'd be surprised if they were at only 3 cents/kwh of overhead. Where it was an older unit for a prior use, that AC likely can't handle anywhere near their BTU, so I'm presuming that's far less than what would actually be needed, but it probably uses a ton of electricity.
Gut feeling? They're paying 12 cents usd/kwh after all reoccurring costs. Let alone upfront costs for all that work and miners. ROI is a distant memory.
Your "all in" cost per kwh in Iceland, Georgia, Washington and China is under 5 cents/kwh.
These guys are in a lot of trouble. They've just put near $1 million into a facility that's probably underwater before the end of 2015. $100K/MW isn't too bad, but it appears that this building came with a large transformer... and suddenly $100K/MW is pretty bad. Your main transformer (and ancillary equipment) is 50-75% of your cost, depending on the voltage the power authority is giving you.
Also the "we're looking at mines in other locations" at the end of the video is a nod to the fact that my assumptions aren't that far off.
But hey, maybe they'll get lucky and the price run will continue to outpace difficulty. (And the rest of us too!)
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