Power Supply Future Proof!

[kritment]

Hey Guys,
Another noob question, please help.
Lets say I buy a power supply which is rated 2400W (2560W at the wall), now I connect an Antminer L3+ to it which is 800W.
Will the actual consumption of electricity be 2560W or 800W (plus power supply factor 10-15%)?
Thanks this has been boggling my head the whole day.
I’m debating if I should future proof and pay extra couple of bucks and buy big PSU units or small?
Thanks much appreciated

[NotFuzzyWarm]

PSU peak operating efficiency range lies typically between 50 to 85% of its rating. Do at least go for Platinum rating as that will be over 93% eff.
The load at wall is only what the miners pull + the 7% or so PSU losses.

[QuintLeo]

Lets say I buy a power supply which is rated 2400W (2560W at the wall), now I connect an Antminer L3+ to it which is 800W.
Will the actual consumption of electricity be 2560W or 800W (plus power supply factor 10-15%)?

 That power supply rating is a MAXIMUM - the L3+ will only cause the power supply to pull however much power the L3+ actually uses plus the inefficiency factor of the power supply, so ballpark 900 watts.

 It's like a car engine rated for 300 horsepower max - but most of the time you are only using 10-20 HP when driving down the freeway at the speed limit.

[kritment]

Cool thanks boys answered my question both you are the best. I will look for platinum power supplies. Do you if the bitmain ones are platinum?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Yes the Bitmain PSU's are rated Platinum eff.
Uh, they also have active PFC (Power Factor Correction) on the AC side so no concerns when running many many KW of them. *Most* reasonable-quality ATX supplies and as far as I know, all the HP, Dell, and IBM supplies have PFC. It will be mentioned in the spec's for it.

Start pulling around 50kw on up of non-PFC power supply loads and the Power company can get rather upset about it... More than 100kw and they WILL penalize you for it.

[philipma1957]

Yes the Bitmain PSU's are rated Platinum eff.
Uh, they also have active PFC (Power Factor Correction) on the AC side so no concerns when running many many KW of them. *Most* reasonable-quality ATX supplies and as far as I know, all the HP, Dell, and IBM supplies have PFC. It will be mentioned in the spec's for it.

Start pulling around 50kw on up of non-PFC power supply loads and the Power company can get rather upset about it... More than 100kw and they WILL penalize you for it.

Okay buysolar and I are looking build I bigger solar array

He does solar installs for a living.

We have a 100kwatt solar array which translates to 20kwatts 24/7/365

He has a 2 leg single phase 300 amp service with 2 lines of 120.
Most of his installs are this size or smaller.

But the next install will be 3 phase.  400 amp 480 volt or if lucky 800 amp 480 volt.

Since niether one of us have worked with bigger setups.

And we know all our needs will be 240 volt or 120 volt.

What should we get to make it easy.

I know 3 phase with 3 120 legs seems easy
Leg a to ground = 120
Leg b to ground = 120
Leg c to ground = 120

Leg a to leg b = 208
Leg a to leg c = 208
Leg b to leg c = 208

So is 3 phase 480 volts better. Seems to me and him no.

Anyone know what is best for  400 amp or 800 amp setup to use miners

[NotFuzzyWarm]

One issue is the 3-phase 480 in the USA it is typically Wye (3 lines and Neutral) meaning that any 1 line-to-Neutral voltage is 277V and PSU's won't like that.

3-phase line-to-neutral voltage = phase voltage (here 480) / 1.73  
So... Need big step down transformer to step down to what is usually 208V.

About that - when we upgraded power to the building our company bought to be 500kW 480V 3-phase I talked to the contractors designing/doing it about preferring a transformer (287kVA) taking our 480v down to 220-240V vs 208 for our smaller loads.  My reason is simple - wider acceptable voltage margin! Most gear states a minimum of 200V and nominal 208 gives us only 8v permissible sag. Put the nominal line at 220V of course will allow for a 20v sag. High (sustained) line voltage is rarely an issue but sags and brownouts are...

Their response: In the US most 3-phase commercial/light industrial power is 208V which is easily split off into 115-120V single phase loads. To fit with that norm, heavy industrial power eg 480V is most often stepped down to 208 because, a. lower power 208-240 equipment is happy with it and b. once again, it splits to 115-120vac for lighting, wall outlets, and whatnot.

As a result, 480 to 208 xmfrs are a dime a dozen, 220-240v output of course can be had but are usually non-stock items and are of course premium-priced. So, 208V transformer it was and I had the taps set to give the highest possible output of 212V nominal. Good enough.

[freegeek]

Does anyone have experience with the Ebit PSU, looks like a good deal but I don't want to burn down the datacenter

[NiHaoMike]

One issue is that if the 3-phase 480 is in the USA it is typically Wye (3 lines and Neutral) meaning that any 1 line-to-Neutral voltage is 277V and PSU's won't like that.

At one Dell data center I used to work at, they had a few "small" autotransformers to step down the 277V to 240V to neutral. Much cheaper and more efficient than converting to 208V phase to phase. Additionally, PSUs that directly accept 277V exist, but are pretty hard to find.

[QuintLeo]

One issue is that if the 3-phase 480 is in the USA it is typically Wye (3 lines and Neutral) meaning that any 1 line-to-Neutral voltage is 277V and PSU's won't like that.

At one Dell data center I used to work at, they had a few "small" autotransformers to step down the 277V to 240V to neutral. Much cheaper and more efficient than converting to 208V phase to phase. Additionally, PSUs that directly accept 277V exist, but are pretty hard to find.

 I am fairly sure that PFC is required as part of the 80Plus specification.

 At least one of Bitmain's power supplies is specifically designed for 277 volt input, might be all of them.

 Most server or ATX supplies however are NOT rated quite that high.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Don't have a manual for Bitmains APW3 or 3+ here but the one for their APW5 says max 265VAC for it.