Pay $0 for electricity?

[shakaru]

So I found a way to bring life into mining even more.

I found this article on Digg today talking about how you could pay $0 for gas. http://1bog.org/blog/infographic-how-to-spend-zero-dollars-on-gas-next-month/ Basically, it states that by leasing an electric car and also leasing a solar system ($379/mo for car $100/mo for solar setup lease) you would pay roughly $479/mo on your free to drive car. Giving the fact that my current car is more than that per month by a good amount, this dosent sound like a bad idea and I would be able to pickup chicks at the farmers market now too!
So this got me thinking. Solar power for $100/mo? I would already be saving money. Not to mention the tax breaks for renewable energy use and so on. So why not solar power your home, then use a cluster to pay for it?
If all I have to do is break $100 a month mining (HA! I laugh at your bitchange!) then Im doing well. Any ideas where I fail besides the age old troll call of "The difficulty is rising! The difficulty is rising!"?

[SgtSpike]

Where on earth are you going to find solar power in any decent amount for $100/month?  It'd be at least $10k for a 2000w setup.  If you're only paying $100/month for it, it'd take 9-10 years to pay off.  And it would only be generating the full 2000w during the peak of the day at the peak of the season - you still have nighttime and winter to deal with.

[phillipsjk]

The capital costs for generating your own power are high. If you want to run your miners 24/7, you need excess generating capacity and large batteries (or just run off the grid at night).

Trying to run off of solar power makes ASICs or FPGAs cost-competitive with GPU mining: I estimate a machine drawing 600Watts 24/7 would need a 3000W solar system. The reason you need the excess capacity is to make sure the batteries fully charge during the day.

Another option would be to monitor the power coming from the solar array and doing automatic load shedding if the power output drops. That would mean you mine a lot more blocks during the day.

[Gabi]

If you produce electricity via solar energy you could sell it.

By using it for mining, you PAY for it, because you don't sell it.

Learn economy 101 

[BitcoinPorn]

Heed my crazy tin foil hat theory people!  Google will run this shit!   Solar power plus them mining means they will be able to have enough power to regulate the coin.  Join Google Plus now or be Goxed forever.


It's in Revelations people.

[lemonginger]

Leasing solar definitely not cost competitive here. Your lease likely won't save much money off of current electricity costs, you don't qualify for tax breaks because you don't own the system, you add quite a bit of debt burden to your house that has to be assumed by the next buyer, and at the end of the lease term, you don't own anything.

Now if you could finance buying a solar system with a refinance of your mortgage, and you lived in an area amenable to solar, THEN you might start being able to think about it being worthit.

[DamienBlack]

The capital costs for generating your own power are high. If you want to run your miners 24/7, you need excess generating capacity and large batteries (or just run off the grid at night).

Trying to run off of solar power makes ASICs or FPGAs cost-competitive with GPU mining: I estimate a machine drawing 600Watts 24/7 would need a 3000W solar system. The reason you need the excess capacity is to make sure the batteries fully charge during the day.

Another option would be to monitor the power coming from the solar array and doing automatic load shedding if the power output drops. That would mean you mine a lot more blocks during the day.

If you feed into the grid you don't need batteries. The grid takes when you have extra and gives when you are short and only charges you for the difference. You only need batteries if you are trying to go off grid.

[enmaku]

http://www.amazon.com/Instapark%C2%AE-100W-Mono-crystalline-Solar-Panel/dp/B004OZJ4FY

That is a 100W monocrystalline solar panel. it is 45 x 26 inches and costs $339 without any accompanying batteries, power conditioners or other necessary devices.

A single 4x5830 mining rig costs consumes about 1,000 watts which means you'd need ten of these to power a single rig.

Aside from requiring an absurd amount of space, that means you'd be paying $3,390 for the solar panels alone if you only mine during the day. If you mine at night, you'll need twice as many panels ($6,780) and enough batteries to store about 2,000 amp-hours of electricity. A decent car battery holds about 40 AH and will run you a bit over $100, which means you'd need 50 such batteries at $100 apiece = $5,000 worth of batteries. Ignoring the cost of the necessary electronics, mounting equipment and labor to make all these things work together, you're up to $11,780 so far.

Here in Las Vegas, electricity costs $0.1128 per kW/H. That quad 5830 rig would cost me ~$2.70 per day to run. In order to recoup your investment here in electricity costs you'd have to run that rig for ~4,363 days or a bit under 12 years. You'd also need about an eleven by fifteen foot (3.3 x 4.5 meter) patch of roof/land/etc. to lay out all 20 panels on as well as a large ventilated space for your 50 car batteries - they vent flammable hydrogen gas as they charge so they need lots of air movement for that many.

So yes, for about $12,000 plus the cost of the hardware, 150 square feet of space, probably several days of setup time, perhaps hiring an electrical contractor and having to deal with flammable/explosive gases you too can be the proud owner of a completely self-sustaining 880 MH/s rig. Yippee. Oh wait, I forgot to include the cost of cooling

[BkkCoins]

Why don't you do some real research about the current costs of solar before coming here.
Solar costs are far higher than the grid when you amortize it over any suitable time frame.

[phillipsjk]

If you feed into the grid you don't need batteries. The grid takes when you have extra and gives when you are short and only charges you for the difference. You only need batteries if you are trying to go off grid.

If everybody uses that strategy, the grid will have problems. I suppose if solar power is flooding the grid while everybody is using AC, it may even out. I live 55 degrees north. Not everybody has AC.

[Jaime Frontero]

Why don't you do some real research about the current costs of solar before coming here.
Solar costs are far higher than the grid when you amortize it over any suitable time frame.

not really.

even in the north central part of the US, amortization of last-gen +2 solar cell setup is only about 12 years.  and the difference in the cost of power is less than a penny.

the trick is living somewhere where the power companies buy back (or are required to buy back) the power you generate.

[elggawf]

Where on earth are you going to find solar power in any decent amount for $100/month?  It'd be at least $10k for a 2000w setup.  If you're only paying $100/month for it, it'd take 9-10 years to pay off.  And it would only be generating the full 2000w during the peak of the day at the peak of the season - you still have nighttime and winter to deal with.

The sites I've seen are 15-year leases on solar equipment. So while $100/month sounds pretty sweet, you'd have to be sure that Bitcoin mining at home is going to remain profitable for fifteen years. If you're that convinced about it, you'd be buying up FPGAs and setting up a 100% renewable mining farm out in Wyoming or something, not fucking around with a couple radeon boxes at home.

[kloinko1n]

So while $100/month sounds pretty sweet, you'd have to be sure that Bitcoin mining at home is going to remain profitable for fifteen years. If you're that convinced about it, you'd be buying up FPGAs and setting up a 100% renewable mining farm out in Wyoming or something, not fucking around with a couple radeon boxes at home.

Or you go to a region where pple grow lots of rice, load the rice straw on a truck and bring it home, put it in a gasifier and run a genset on it which supplies your mining rigs with energy. I guess that's a much lower investment if you set it up big enough.
Dilemma: you could do the same and sell the electricity to the grid instead of use it for mining.
Well, anyway, the idea of mining 'for free' is appealing.

[FreeMoney]

 

0=100?

[Peter Lambert]

you would pay roughly $479/mo on your free to drive car.

IF YOU HAVE TO PAY MONEY, IT IS NOT FREE!

Seriously, this is just stupid.

[BkkCoins]

the trick is living somewhere where the power companies buy back (or are required to buy back) the power you generate.

You jest. Have you seen the cost of the inverters required to sync and feed into the grid?

[SteveFL]

Don't forget that the lifespan for the power inverters for solar is about 10 years.  About the time you recoup your initial ROI you'll have to invest about 30-40% back into it AGAIN to replace them.

Unless your state offers a tax incentive or rebate you will be VERY hard pressed to find any form of solar panel ROI unless you're willing to wait 15+ years.

I live in Florida (which is a prime spot for solar) and I pay $0.14 to $0.16 a kwh (post taxes).  The best ROI any installer could show me was about 16 years and a warm fuzzy feeling for reducing my carbon footprint.

[elggawf]

you would pay roughly $479/mo on your free to drive car.

IF YOU HAVE TO PAY MONEY, IT IS NOT FREE!

Seriously, this is just stupid.

It says free to drive, not free to own. Many people who lease a brand new car pay more than $479 a month, and then pay for gas and parking on top of that (in many places like a few Californian cities, EVs park free). Careful throwing around that word "stupid".

Don't forget that the lifespan for the power inverters for solar is about 10 years.  About the time you recoup your initial ROI you'll have to invest about 30-40% back into it AGAIN to replace them.

Except in this suggested scenario, you're renting the solar setup - so it's their problem when an inverter takes a dump. I don't think it's worth it for mining since $100/month would probably buy you juice for a lot of miners and you have to sign a 15 year lease on the equipment in most cases, and I just don't trust for an at-home setup to remain profitable for a decade and a half.