[11.2kW SOLAR/WIND/MAN] NastyMining Green Energy Project ☀💨💪🔋

[OgNasty]

SunPower issued a replacement order for the inverters used on the solar panels.  They are currently being replaced.  I'm told this will result in a higher max output as well as more accurate reporting. 

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[OgNasty]

When the inverters were replaced the workers removed the "pest-proofing" that was keeping pigeons away.  This resulted in a nest being built under one of the panels.  Today new pest-proofing was installed and the pigeon nest with eggs was removed.  I did not ask what became of it or the eggs, but I assume they were not relocated.  RIP.

[OgNasty]

Wow! Wind turbine! So much better than solar IMO! The sun isnt always out where I live but it sure as heck is windy all the time! Thank you so much for these mixed ideas you gave me!

Honestly, if the wind turbine wasn't donated, it would have been a near complete loss.  It generates less energy than I do daily on the exercise bike.  Additionally, I have been hearing complaints from my HOA, and may be forced to halt it's operation at the next quarterly meeting while we further discuss it.  Unless you are on a large property where you can get a massive turbine very high in the air, or are using it to charge batteries, I wouldn't suggest anyone go the wind turbine route. 

For this project, if I am forced to halt operation of the wind turbine and want to keep it somewhat wind powered, I may decide to go with something I can hide a little easier, like this: https://www.amazon.com/My-SolarMill-Hybrid-Commercial-Renewable/dp/B013F6FQ9U

[MoparMiningLLC]

I have 3 acres, i wonder if a wind turbine would be worth it for me then. enough space and no HOA to complain.

My solar helps but as a 10kw system, its not generating enough to cover much.

[VoskCoin]

[...]

Since you've been involved in green mining for years.. any recommendations on the solar route? Any newer wind turbine designs catch your eye that are worth it to any degree? I'm assuming you dont have water access so no hydro?

[OgNasty]

[...]

Since you've been involved in green mining for years.. any recommendations on the solar route? Any newer wind turbine designs catch your eye that are worth it to any degree? I'm assuming you dont have water access so no hydro?

I can only speak to my solar hardware, and I would say it is a great purchase for anyone with a good amount of sunshine.  As I've previously stated, I don't think wind turbines are the way to go for on-grid applications.  If I ever get the chance to go hydro, I'll be all over it.  I've looked at some solutions with what I have available, but they aren't worth the hassle.

Solar Equipment:
29x SunPower E20 327W AC Modules w/ Integrated Microinverter (link)

[achtung082]

If you are handy you can look at making your own more efficient wind turbine.

I have been following this guy on youtube, looks interesting and is on my list of projects to investigate when I get a real workshop back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiyOwzX6kBk

[OgNasty]

@OgNasty, I'm thinking about buying 30 solar panels from Canadian Solar CS1H-325MS-Black > 325 Watt HiDM High Density Mono-PERC Solar Panel - 35mm BoB for my rig. A question, with 30 solar panels working how many ASICs or GPUs these panels can handle without using the electricity from the grid? The location have good sun exposure.

That's a question that only leads to more questions.  Are you going to turn off the rigs during periods of no sunlight or will you be buying an army of batteries? 

I think it's best to look at the production and then consider it an offset to whatever usage you're using.  You'd be surprised how little mining power you get from solar panels.  Your question indicates you may have higher expectations from solar panels than you will receive from them.  The math you're asking me to do for you is also extremely oversimplified to the point where I am not sure I believe that you're seriously considering solar for this use.

[OgNasty]

hi im sorry if this is already answered, i was wondering are you able to generate all electricity needed to support your mining via solar and tesla battery?

thats so epic your using tesla tech like that, such a good creative way to do thiings

The battery holds about 13.5 kWh of usable energy.  You could say that this gives you about 1kW of stored energy per hour to use during the non-sunlight hours.  While that is enough to power our altcoin miner, it would not power our ASIC.  Additionally, the solar panels provide about 50kWh of electricity per day, which comes close to enough energy to power the mining operation running currently, but the grid is still needed for overnight without more storage capacity. 

In conclusion, batteries are cool because you can use electricity off of the grid, but that is what you are paying for.  It is doubtful that a battery purchase would ever be profitable unless you had some extraordinary things going on, whereas solar would likely be a smart investment so long as you stayed in the residence for more than a decade.

[stonehedge]

@ognasty

I'm involved with a sustainable mining operation in Iceland.  We're using volcanoes for power, ice for cooling and reforesting in South America. Would you be interested in meeting us and seeing if we can benefit from each other's work?

[OgNasty]

@ognasty

I'm involved with a sustainable mining operation in Iceland.  We're using volcanoes for power, ice for cooling and reforesting in South America. Would you be interested in meeting us and seeing if we can benefit from each other's work?

Feel free to PM me with any ideas you have or what you're interested in.  While I think generating energy from volcanoes sounds very cool, I'm not sure that's really on my radar as something we want to explore.  I'm always open to listening to ideas though.  Would love to see some volcano pics as well.

[stonehedge]

Thanks OG, will drop you a PM when I have a few moments.

[OgNasty]

The main downside of crypto is that it not only consumes a lot of power, but also creates a lot of heat.

Thanks for that mind bending comment.

I would counter that statement by saying the an upside of crypto is that it encourages cheaper and more sustainable energy generation practices that could lead to innovation in the field that would not have occurred otherwise. 

It's heat generation is also not a problem in many areas.  I know I haven't had to run my heater in years during the winter and if I lived somewhere cold it could be useful all year round. 

I think stating only the negatives is a bit short sided.  My house wouldn't be solar powered without Bitcoin, nor would I have ever cared enough to look into other alternative energy generation techniques.

[OgNasty]

I went ahead and updated the solar energy statistics.  The solar system has produced nearly 69 thousand kWh to date and continues to function without issue.

The environmental savings data might be the most impressive as you can see the impact of even this small operation going green on the environment.  This data is calculated by taking the energy produced by the system (kWh) and multiplying it by a conversion value provided by the EPA to estimate the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions avoided.

[B1-66ER]

Hi all,

Hi OP, I was thinking about your site plan ..

...
2/10/17 - Engineering design completed.  Site plan received.
...

Well, I think Bitcoin mining farming is no different than the traditional datacenter industry and I  think they are doing a great job at building and scaling their massive computational workloads.

One of the aspects that comes to my mind is the cooling systems.

"A significant portion of data center inefficiencies systems from cooling overhead, with chillers being the largest culprit. Cooling losses are three times greater than power losses, presenting the most promising target for efficiency improvements: if all cooling losses were eliminated, the Power Usage Effectiveness - PUE would drop to 1.26, whereas a zero-loss UPS system would yield as PUE of only 1.8. Typically, the worse a facility’s PUE is, the higher the percentage of the total loss comes from the cooling system [BM06]. Intuitively, there are only so many ways to mishandle a power distribution system, but many more ways to mishandle cooling"[1]

Saying that, another day I came about with that idea of optimizations that can be done at datacenter floor designers such as the idea of "Server Dome"

Beyond ServerDome: The bizarre-looking data center that saves water and energy

https://youtu.be/A7fKmlTeHJk

https://serverdomes.com/faq/

What the OP think about that idea? Also I was wondering if it's possible to create a small model, lets say using 5 old Antminer S9 rearrange then on "Server Dome" configuration and actually perform some measurements? 



[1]Luiz André Barroso; Urs Hölzle; Parthasarathy Ranganathan; Margaret Martonosi, The Datacenter as a Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines, Third Edition , Morgan & Claypool, 2018.

[cvaldess]

Hi,
don't know why people use those expensive inverters in solar mining rig,

you can install your 12V solar panels + battery + battery charger and attach your battery's output to your 12V video card's input
if you use regular motherboard with 20pin power source connector replace your regular PSU with a PicoPSU from minipc.de it also take power from battery 12V output

hope can help you.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Hi,
don't know why people use those expensive inverters in solar mining rig,

you can install your 12V solar panels + battery + battery charger and attach your battery's output to your 12V video card's input
if you use regular motherboard with 20pin power source connector replace your regular PSU with a PicoPSU from minipc.de it also take power from battery 12V output

hope can help you.

Bitcoin miners do not use videocards or motherboards. While still useful for mining crap altcoins, those became useless for mining BTC in late 2013 when ASIC-based miners hit the market.

That said, you are neglecting the fact that miners require fairly tight regulation of the voltage input fed to the hash boards. In the case of older miners that use separate PSU's their range is from 11.5 to 12.5vdc. Too low and their internal Vcore regulators will not have enough margin to operate, too high and you risk damaging said regulators.

The newer miners all use integrated PSU's that provide an adjustable output between 15-21vdc and the actual voltage is adjusted up-down by the hardware to match the speed you are running the chips at. The hash boards have no secondary regulators for Vcore - the PSU itself is adjusted to take the place of the secondary regulators and that gives a several percent increase in efficiency. The autotuning process tests various combinations of clock speed and voltage to get best performance so again, a fixed DC supply voltage is a no-go.

Lead-acid batteries will vary from a resting voltage of 12.2 and have a charging voltage over 14v. Under load the voltage can go down to 10v or lower depending on what the battery can tolerate before it is damaged.

[Tsub]

Any insight on rig hosting companies that are predominantly sourcing energy from renewables? 

I have been looking but doesn't seem to have too many, especially in states that don't have income tax.

Thoughts?

T

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Bitcoin miners do not use videocards or motherboards. While still useful for mining crap altcoins, those became useless for mining BTC in late 2013 when ASIC-based miners hit the market.

The member you replied to is a newbie and who knows how or what he's mining or how much he understands.  And while you can't mine bitcoin on GPUs anymore, those crap altcoins that can be mined with them can be converted to bitcoin easily enough, which is a viable alternative for those folks who can't afford ASIC miners.  You probably know that, but I figured I'd point it out anyway.

OgNasty, you and I may not like each other, but I very much respect your green energy project.  I only wish I had enough money to get started in bitcoin mining and doing it with solar power.  I'm not interested in doing it through anyone else--maybe some day in the future I'll be able to afford some solar panels (and the bitcoin mining hardware, too). 

[Tsub]

@ognasty

I'm involved with a sustainable mining operation in Iceland.  We're using volcanoes for power, ice for cooling and reforesting in South America. Would you be interested in meeting us and seeing if we can benefit from each other's work?

@stonehedge

I was looking into Iceland rig hosting (Thor and Moljnir) but there seem to be some legal / tax challenges if you live outside of Iceland that you need to work through before you can pursue colocating rigs there.

Have you had to deal with this or are you based there?

T