Any solar powered rigs out there? I have an idea for one, check it out!

[Desolator]

Large panels are never worth it.  That's a fairly low price but out of my budget.  Also, I don't have room for it I think it has nothing to do with manufacturing price and everything to do with small solar panels only being able to sell for hobbyist price and large ones being able to be sold for super rich pro-green hippie prices I mean yeah thicker gauge cable in the whole system and a more expensive regulator and/or inveter isn't free but it isn't thousands of dollars more either.  They're jacking the prices up.

Btw..."just take a basic mining rig with a couple of 5870's"  Yeeeeeeah, that's a real basic rig *eye roll.* So triple the price on 3 cards and just under triple the mining power...and triple the heat to deal with and a way more than triple the price 3x PCI-E x16 board and a more than triple the price power supply.  That's not really the ideal rig as far as money vs bitcoins goes.  It will create more bitcoins faster but would take longer to pay itself off.  Also, DEFINITELY not for this kind of project.  You want to keep the power as low as possible while maintaining a respectable MH/s.  This rig I have should be able to theoretically push out 300MH/s on 250-300W.  Plus, I don't have enough room to create a device of any sort capable of suppling 750W in a green way.

I was actually considering a turbine based system with wood burning cuz mirrors are a pain and there's lots of geometric math and astronomy and crap involved.  But burning wood is about is green as the dead trees you're burning

I think with my budget, for now, I'm going to attempt the proposed "supplemental power" idea.  That's AC house voltage running everything but a solar panel wired in parallel to the graphics card so it's up to a 50% load reduction.  It's the cost of the panel kit plus $5 in wiring and that's it.  It can't get any simpler.  It's not a 100% free electricity solution but it will definitely take a sizeable chunk out of the electricity costs to operate it.

[Xephan]

DEFINITELY not for this kind of project.  You want to keep the power as low as possible while maintaining a respectable MH/s.  This rig I have should be able to theoretically push out 300MH/s on 250-300W.  Plus, I don't have enough room to create a device of any sort capable of suppling 750W in a green way.

If it helps, I get 410MH/s on 300W (measured at AC) with a not-green CPU and a few HDDs since it's my gaming rig. If you drop to a low power CPU and minimize the HDD, I'll think 250W should be pretty doable. Personally I would had done this, might had gotten the panels cheap since the company next door sells them. Except my location doesn't give me enough direct sunlight

[mushy99999]

Btw..."just take a basic mining rig with a couple of 5870's"  Yeeeeeeah, that's a real basic rig *eye roll.*

This IS a basic mining rig. The 5870's can be bought for £120 if you know where to get them and happen to be the best value for money at that price. I used to have 5830's. They are currently £75 in the UK. But let's get serious here, this is a very basic mining rig. I know people who are running banks of 5970's using 20+ machines in Russia. The 5970's are not value for money (well for me anyway), but depending on your contacts / job etc, it is viable for some people due to how cheaply they can get their hands on the cards. Now each of those machines are pushing 2400 MH . That's serious stuff. Anything less than say 1000MH from a machine is simply playing at it. Let's face it even at that speed you're not going to get much return. So I stand by what I say, a couple (2) of 5870's is simply playing at it and basic.

[Uhlbelk]

What about rigs using The dedicated Dual FPGA X6500 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37904.0) One would reckon these instead of the 750w GPUs could make the world of alternative energy BitCoin Mining a reality.

[V4Vendettas]

Just finished my own solar install  3.1kwp system. Should take the edge off the little server rack i got going on.
Should pass my MCS acreditation next month then I will be back offering discounts to fellow miners   

[indio007]

Ok, this would do what you want (cheapest possible solution).

http://www.aliexpress.com/product-gs/473114247-Free-shipping-10-100w-solar-panel-grid-solar-power-system-800w-wholesalers.html

So just a bit over $2300 for a solution. Is it worth it?

Price seems too good to be true.

[coiningz]

http://www.sunelec.com - $0.74 per watt with a 10 panel minimum.  And no, it's not too good to be true.  If any of you find a better deal anywhere, PLEASE send me a PM!

[Pearikay]

http://www.sunelec.com - $0.74 per watt with a 10 panel minimum.  And no, it's not too good to be true.  If any of you find a better deal anywhere, PLEASE send me a PM!

Ordering now.

[BombaUcigasa]

Welcome to the dream of minimal-path value/entropy! I'll point out some stuff I already discussed on my thread ( http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16377.0 )
- The power rating on electrical devices is not fake usually, just misunderstood, there are many variables to be ironed out, especially in such a complex system like this.
- A computer PSU wastes the least power at around 50-60% load, if you go below 30% or above 80%, the nominal efficiency (~80%) gets worse. That means you need a 1000W PSU if you actually draw 500W with your computer. Your goal is to get maximum mhash/watt.
- With solar power, you can basically achieve over-nominal power during the day, allowing for overclocking and over-volting to increase your performance by up to 25%, while you can underclock and undervolt during the night to use less power but still a good mhash/watt value
- A computer UPS can run for longer than it's original battery, but it's not designed to. You need to actively cool it and make some modifications or new components to allow it to actually charge a bigger battery bank (if you use more batteries) and not burn up when running. You might also use other solutions, rectifiers and inverters dedicated for solar applications. A rectifier and an inverter will have 60-80% efficiency.
- Batteries will offer the most power if discharged at a certain rate. Discharge them too fast and they offer less than nominal power. This is why a 15 minutes UPS holds less than 5 minutes if you double it's load. The bigger the load, the less power you get to use.
- Solar panels cost about 1$/watt, and you need about 1m^2 for 100W. Besides the panels, you need an almost identical budget for the wiring and inverters (either common inverter or micro-inverters for each panel), so you pay 2$/watt for solar power capacity (4000$)

Now, let's review. A 500W PC with 400W of hashing power (800 mhash/s) will need a 1000W PSU, over 700W from the inverter, and over 1000W from the panels. And for running it at low solar activity, you might require 700Whr per every hour. Suppose you need about 14 hours of offline power (more for cloud cover) or almost 10kWhr. Most deep cycle 12V batteries have around 100 AH, so you need 8 batteries. The price seems to be 0.1$/Whr, so you need 800$ for those.

This is definitely something to do if you already have parts of the installation or plan to use it for other purposes too. Basically you don't need to sell your excess power to the grid for a measly price, you store it in monetary value which does not decay as opposed to other forms of energy storage. Depending on where you live and how much you get the stuff priced at, look at 5 to 12 years ROI.

[BombaUcigasa]

Just finished my own solar install  3.1kwp system. Should take the edge off the little server rack i got going on.
Should pass my MCS acreditation next month then I will be back offering discounts to fellow miners   

Please post more details about your installation

[V4Vendettas]

30 x Schott ASI 103
http://www.schott.com/australia/english/download/schott_asi_data_sheet_95-103_en.pdf

2 x SB 1200/1700
http://www.ausenergy.com.au/pdf/SMA_SB1200_1700_data_sheet.pdf

One string of 15 modules for each inverter.
Inverters mounted outside to make my life a little harder than it needed to be.

West south west facing sadly and with some shading issuses hence the the Thin film ASI pannels as they are great under low/poor light conditions.

Dude to shading and orientation I doubt this would be financially viable unless you can do it at cost.....Which I haz



Had to reinforce the roof a little too and dig  a dirty great hole to get that cable to the DB thats in the garage (no idea why its in the garage i didnt build the house).




Systems in the Uk taking advantage of feed in tarrifs meaning I'm getting paid £0.44 per KWh just for producing the juice even tho I'm using every watt mining i still get paid.

No working data yet but I have a SMA web box that cost a fortune that I will get sorted at some point.

[greyhawk]

That's a nice lookin house.

[nmat]

That's a nice lookin house.

Indeed.  I know nothing about solar panels, but that house looks really good

[BombaUcigasa]

I'm getting paid £0.44 per KWh just for producing the juice even tho I'm using every watt mining i still get paid.

What what whaaaat?!

[1905]

k i skipped all of this but main post plus 2-3 comments. great idea. totally agree. skip batteries. hook solar to home grid. energy used will deduct from bill. if more energy is made than used local power company send u a check. look into it . if u have the time and are open to other options, look into fresnel lenses in a geodesic dome harnessing heat to create steam (steam account for 80% of world electricity) since the steam would also be creating clean (no nuclear waste) distilled water which can be sold as well. steam nuclear power plants (the most common kind) run at 550 degrees F. one 40 foot diameter by 20 foot high dome would create over 10000 degrees F. the math is there. the tweaking is yet to be done. just an idea. not yet practical. I am going to build one. worst case scenario i make 2million gallons of distilled water with one dome a year . nobody likes my idea. thinks im a troll. but i stg imma build one and if it doesnt work. then ill admit i was wrong happily. power to ya whatever u decide on doing.

[djelusion]

nifty idea however the roi.. return of investment is too long to reap the benefits 3+ years.. ouch

[1905]

i agree. but here is an idea. i used to be a glazier (build highstory glass buildings) we use aluminum framing to create these structures. (kawneer, vistawall, etc) you can goto your local glass company and see if they will sell you 33-36" cutoff pieces from large jobs, you will need 1/4" pockets for fresnel lense glass. 65" pieces can be ordered for aprox 150$ they will have to be custom cut by you, (not that hard) to fit into structure. structural pieces only need to be aprox 33 inches. you could save 9/10s of cost to build. reinforcing with steel as need. since ive worked for alot of these companies locally i would get them for next to zero. spending less that 5k on fresnel lenses and building myself............ then the geeking comes in.... have to fuck with that shit for a minute. but say i made a working product. and leaked it to the world. we could all have free energy. free clean water. this is a big issue in 3rd world countries. idk. im a dreamer, if my dream proves to be false i would die happy knowing i tried. what else am i going to spend my money on? jersey shore shit, being a complete tool? lol naaa im good, did that, never was happy doin it. id rather work towards what i believe and helping others see what we can be capable of. the amount of energy that hits the earth each year is enough to replace all energy sources on the earth 2x over. energy cannot be created (that we know of) so all we can do is try to harness the energy we have. using energy that exists on the earth will never work... its a matter of time... if the sun goes out... then we have alot more to worry about than running out of energy call me crazy. crazy with a dream is fine with me.

[1905]

65" FRESNEL LENSES* sorry... also each 65" piece produces over 3000 degrees F. but you would be losing surface area reducing that. i think my original calculations had the 65" x 65" surface area in a triangular shape. reguardless. its worth investigating.

[1905]

3000 degrees F is only in direct sunlight. hence the idea of using geodesic dome to make the energy come to you. many efforts in using fresnel lenses to track the sun have already been pursued. highly expensive. use geometry to your benefit. also photons (energy from the sun) might be focusing heat to a wider area at the base of the dome. not creating full heat potential. using another (larger) lense would then focus the photons to a more centralized area. repeat this process again and yet even more focused area. it would also be possible to transfer these photons through fiberoptics cables to transfer energy to specific areas. e.i. if heat creates x amount of energy new fiberoptics portals would be opened up to send photons to another area creating a more vast surface area of heat at aproximately 550 degrees F boiling more water into steam. further super critical steam can be created at 705 degrees F and 2000 lbs of pressure. this creates a scientific phenomenon which cannon be explained. the benefit of this to use would be to be able to remove oil from water which is extremely expensive to do. you might be aware of project XL pipeline which wishes to create oil pipeline through ogallala aquifer. If this water was to be contaminated this could be detrimental to life in the area. If we could clean that water for pennies of investment vs long term profits we could save ourselves from potential disaster. regardless we could always clean seawater (which is the original reason distilling water originated) IDK i think crazy thoughts like i said. but it all comes down to cutting overhead (which is the original reason for this post) you have to goto the source, the source is the sun. creator of all energy. (that we are aware of)

[1905]

sorry my mind keeps rambling to itself.... lol... even furthermore if fiberoptics were to fail due to too much heat etc... crystals have power to transfer and store energy which we do not yet understand. COMPLETELY off the wall but if you study stories of ATLANTIS (like i said off the wall) there are depictions of energy which is being harness through a "DOME" into crystals which make certain frequencies. Furthermore they were able to use these crystals to filter energy (different colors of the energy, e.i. the rainbow which shows these different aspects of photons) certain energies doing certain things. Healing/destroying living beings. My concept is that the sun being the creator of all energy hence created all matter. Matter "grows" to its certain existence due to chemical makeup and the reaction of that makeup from the suns energy. That is why we grow. we absorb energy and that energy makes us into what we are whether we go outside, eat food which is a result of absorbed energy, or drink water (which is a phenomenon I believe in itself) regardless there is alot of possibilities that could occur.