Mining hosting @ $0.043 per KwH, 100% green energy

[Puppet]

Hi all,

Today, few among you will care about electricity price. Its only a tiny fraction of your mining investment and revenue, and your ROI is determined almost solely by when you receive your hardware. I dont think many people would be interested in shipping their beloved hardware far abroad right now, I guess many would rather sleep next to it

However, this will change. In 6 months or so, profit margins will dwindle and at some point, most of our revenue will be eaten up by electricity (and hosting) costs. Many among us who pay residential electricity prices will not be able to compete with large scale mining operations that get their electricity far cheaper. So, lets solve this

Im considering setting up a company to provide bitcoin collocation services in Iceland. Why Iceland?
- $0.043 per KwH for industrial contracts, guaranteed for up to 12 years.
- 100% green energy from hydro and geothermal power plants.
- attractive business climate, unlike most other countries that offer such low electricity cost (Iran, Venezuela, Kuwait,..).
- not too far from either the EU or US.

The plan currently is simple and consists of 2 phases. First phase is simply a group buy to rent rack space at an existing tier 3 or 4 datacenter in iceland.

I requested a few quotes, and what I got so far is substantially lower than the hosting that Cointerra advertises on their website.
Cointerra charges $2599 for 6 month hosting of a terraminer 4, or $433 per month.
What I got so far works out to about $200 per month, less than half Cointerra's price and competitive with many European domestic electricity rates alone.
Remember, this is for hosting in a tier 4 datacenter with all provisions, like UPS, diesel backup, multiple backbone connections, fancy access control, fire suppression, on site permanence etc. Price is based on the assumption the machine will use ~1400W and if we can get enough interest to fill at least 5 racks.

In a second phase, if our margins drop even further and $200 per month per 4U miner begins to hurt,  assuming we can get enough miners to fill 20 or more racks, I am looking in to buying one or several modular datacenters (fancy word for a datacenter container) and putting them in Iceland. Something like this:



(And yes, I will be looking at asicminer's submersion cooling solution if/when it becomes available, although I have my doubts it will be economically more viable).

These systems would have their limitations, for instance I would likely not be providing UPS power and diesel backup, but at a later stage in the mining game, if our margins are that thin, I dont think those costs are warranted. If you only pay for the electricity you use, downtime would be "cheap" because our margins would be low anyway. I may reconsider that, but thats my current thinking. I cant give a reasonable price estimate for those containers yet, but obviously the idea is to be significantly below that of tier 3/4 datacenters. I suspect we may be able to cut that price by another 30-50%, but thats only a rough guess.

Before anyone asks, this wont become a bitcoin security that you can invest in, nor will it be a preorder scheme, if I decide to go ahead I will fund it myself, or at most accept private investors.

Time frame I have in mind, is to start renting the racks in spring 2014, meanwhile prepare everything for our own modular datacenter and depending on market conditions, likely implement that by summer/autumn 2014.

Right now, I would just like to hear from people if they are interested, and how many U you may want to rent and for what timeframes. Feel free to PM if you dont want this in public.  IM also open to suggestions and criticism of the concept.

[Puppet]

List of rack units of potentially interested miners:

- 6x 4U CT anonymous via PM
- 2x 4U CT anonymous via PM


Total: 8U

[Xyver]

Sounds pretty cool. So are you talking about cloud mining, or having people send their miners to you to run?

I'm pretty sure the second, so you'll have to build up some trust before people are willing to let their miners go.

[Puppet]

Sounds pretty cool. So are you talking about cloud mining, or having people send their miners to you to run?

I'm pretty sure the second, so you'll have to build up some trust before people are willing to let their miners go.

People would send their own miners there. They wouldnt even have to trust me, they would be sending their hardware straight to the datacenter. For payment Im sure we can work something out with escrow/multsig and the DC is open to using bitpay.

Its just that they dont like to be bothered with dozens of individual customers ordering 4U at the time, hence an organized group buy. Once they are in Iceland, its also a lot easier to move them to another premise.

(btw, iceland is a small island. You are not going to run very far with a container full of stolen hardware).

[Seccour]

I like it. It's sound cool.

[tekke]

Nice idea, I'll be following this up

[BitcoinHeroes]

Hi all,

Today, few among you will care about electricity price. Its only a tiny fraction of your mining investment and revenue, and your ROI is determined almost solely by when you receive your hardware. I dont think many people would be interested in shipping their beloved hardware far abroad right now, I guess many would rather sleep next to it

However, this will change. In 6 months or so, profit margins will dwindle and at some point, most of our revenue will be eaten up by electricity (and hosting) costs. Many among us who pay residential electricity prices will not be able to compete with large scale mining operations that get their electricity far cheaper. So, lets solve this

Im considering setting up a company to provide bitcoin collocation services in Iceland. Why Iceland?
- $0.043 per KwH for industrial contracts, guaranteed for up to 12 years.
- 100% green energy from hydro and geothermal power plants.
- attractive business climate, unlike most other countries that offer such low electricity cost (Iran, Venezuela, Kuwait,..).
- not too far from either the EU or US.

The plan currently is simple and consists of 2 phases. First phase is simply a group buy to rent rack space at an existing tier 3 or 4 datacenter in iceland.

I requested a few quotes, and what I got so far is substantially lower than the hosting that Cointerra advertises on their website.
Cointerra charges $2599 for 6 month hosting of a terraminer 4, or $433 per month.
What I got so far works out to about $200 per month, less than half Cointerra's price and competitive with many European domestic electricity rates alone.
Remember, this is for hosting in a tier 4 datacenter with all provisions, like UPS, diesel backup, multiple backbone connections, fancy access control, fire suppression, on site permanence etc. Price is based on the assumption the machine will use ~1400W and if we can get enough interest to fill at least 5 racks.

In a second phase, if our margins drop even further and $200 per month per 4U miner begins to hurt,  assuming we can get enough miners to fill 20 or more racks, I am looking in to buying one or several modular datacenters (fancy word for a datacenter container) and putting them in Iceland. Something like this:



(And yes, I will be looking at asicminer's submersion cooling solution if/when it becomes available, although I have my doubts it will be economically more viable).

These systems would have their limitations, for instance I would likely not be providing UPS power and diesel backup, but at a later stage in the mining game, if our margins are that thin, I dont think those costs are warranted. If you only pay for the electricity you use, downtime would be "cheap" because our margins would be low anyway. I may reconsider that, but thats my current thinking. I cant give a reasonable price estimate for those containers yet, but obviously the idea is to be significantly below that of tier 3/4 datacenters. I suspect we may be able to cut that price by another 30-50%, but thats only a rough guess.

Before anyone asks, this wont become a bitcoin security that you can invest in, nor will it be a preorder scheme, if I decide to go ahead I will fund it myself, or at most accept private investors.

Time frame I have in mind, is to start renting the racks in spring 2014, meanwhile prepare everything for our own modular datacenter and depending on market conditions, likely implement that by summer/autumn 2014.

Right now, I would just like to hear from people if they are interested, and how many U you may want to rent and for what timeframes. Feel free to PM if you dont want this in public.  IM also open to suggestions and criticism of the concept.

Nice, you can do something like cex.io.... since cex.io KWH price is way higher then yours... you should be more profitable ...

[Puppet]

Nice, you can do something like cex.io.... since cex.io KWH price is way higher then yours... you should be more profitable ...

At this point, IM not interested in offering such a service. Investment in mining equipment would be huge, full of risk and I dont believe it to be profitable. So either I would have to take a huge financial risk myself, or sell 'preorders" of something that I believe will be a net loss to my customers.

Once the network stabilizes at least somewhat and mining becomes more predictable, mining hardware more readily available, I may revise that, and offer hosted hardware (that is ready to hash in the datacenter), but certainly not right now.

[mog]

I'm already located in Iceland and know many of the owners of the DC's here as well as some of the smaller less well known ones. Right now I run my own batch #2 avalon here. Let me know if you'd like to collaborate.

[perezoso]

We need Mog's spare bedroom to stay in while we come up there to check out the facilities and see if things are real.  

Also, how does Señor Customs Agent in Keflavik react to a padded box containing mining hardware?  (As luggage, I'm thinking, but it could be by courier.)

[Johanna]

Nice, now im really jealous.. I am paying 4 times more for my energy...

[mog]

heh nice try perezoso you and every other friend I have back home has tried that one.

Customs here are pretty tough actually. If you get a package sent in the mail they open it usually to assess VAT and import tariff. That combined with a weak krona keep imports from outside pretty low, many hand smuggle stuff in when they go on holiday, some even refer to it as the national pastime. If this was a serious plan under consideration, your best bet would be a cargo container filled with mining equipment straight from china, direct dropped into one of the DC's. I know for a fact Verne global and Thor both support data centre in a box facilities as I've been in both and seen them. Again only large installations are going to net you the cheap electricity prices that you read about.

[JTrain_51]

Looks cool does this compare to the thing butterfly labs is doing
Hope there the same stats money wise.

looks good!

[kostagr33k]

Does that cost account for Remote Hands or maintenance? Don't forget just because your paying a DC $/month doesn't mean they will manage / monitor your Racks 24/7. When your dealing with mining rigs, you want to make sure they are monitored and maintained 24/7 due to the loss of revenue when they go down.

[SolarSilver]

Does that cost account for Remote Hands or maintenance? Don't forget just because your paying a DC $/month doesn't mean they will manage / monitor your Racks 24/7. When your dealing with mining rigs, you want to make sure they are monitored and maintained 24/7 due to the loss of revenue when they go down.

and what about setup cost?

To get your machines from a box into a rack, hooked up with an uplink means usually a hefty fee.
Does the setup include PDU's or do you have to provide them yourself?

[Puppet]

Prices I got included 1 hour per month per rack remote hands.  I dont think there is any setup fee, but Ill check that. PDU's included.

[kostagr33k]

1 Hour of remote hands per device or rack? If its per rack, then Id suggest you look into their normal hourly prices, as well as ensure you have Remote Managed PDU so you can power cycle your devices.

I expect with these rigs will need random reboots and other issues resolved, so make sure that your build that into the cost. DCs "seem" cheap until you factor all of the costs in.

In other words, one you add up all costs and device by KWH you can figure out if its cheaper to host in your house, or Colo . A colo facility near me, I did the math and it came out to $.45/kwh (I believe for a rack of 5000-8000 watts) . But that included power,rack,network, pdu, etc.


Kosta

[Puppet]

1 Hour of remote hands per device or rack? If its per rack, then Id suggest you look into their normal hourly prices, as well as ensure you have Remote Managed PDU so you can power cycle your devices.

Like I said, per rack. Ive not gone in to detail yet, many things can be "configured", SLA levels, logistics, down to storage of spare parts, etc,  and it will depend on the DC, but right now Im not yet offering a turn key solution, Im gauging interest while trying to establish a bitcoin friendly solution. Im just giving you an idea of prices; what I got and wrote so far is not very different from standard offerings in Iceland, but its already pretty competitive if you dont mind hosting your machines abroad. If I can gather enough interest, Im sure I can negotiate better conditions, but Id like to hear what people want.

I expect with these rigs will need random reboots and other issues resolved, so make sure that your build that into the cost.

As long as thats the case, and you would need more than an occassional remote reboot, Im not sure I would want to host externally. Particularly not now when electricity and hosting cost isnt very crucial yet. Fast forward a few months and that will change. Fast forward 6-8 months and that will change dramatically.

In other words, one you add up all costs and device by KWH you can figure out if its cheaper to host in your house, or Colo . A colo facility near me, I did the math and it came out to $.45/kwh (I believe for a rack of 5000-8000 watts) . But that included power,rack,network, pdu, etc.

So more than twice the price I got upon first request and about 3-4x more than what I hope to achieve ultimately. But like I said, today that price is probably good enough to not bother with the hassle. Once mining operating margins shrink to the point where that $.45 is pretty much your entire profit margin, it will look rather different.

[kostagr33k]

Puppet,

I hope you don't think I am criticizing what your trying to do. I just wanted to show you my perspective on things as I've been an Systems Engineer of sorts over the last 10 years and have dealt with many hosting facilities in the past.

For example, I worked for a company that made $10,000/minute in some of their applications and downtime between 6AM EST - 2AM EST cost them serious money. When your talking about a Large Scale Bitcoin mining operation, you need to account for when things go bad, not when they work well.

The reason the price I got was around $.45/kwh for about 8KW/rack is due to the fact they had superior services/multiple generators / UPS / etc AND Insurance.

Some of the bitcoin mining DC that I've spoken to in the last few months that are starting up, are not even Datacenters. There just warehouses with racks and power, let alone UPS or cooling because "its to expensive" . Those things need to be considered when you have over $100K worth of Bitcoin hardware, and what happens when the warehouse Burns Down/Floods/Extended power outage.


Thats why that company I mentioned above paid for one of the most expensive DC solutions .. Piece of mind that our outages would be limited throughout the year, protecting revenue generating services, just like Bitcoin Mining. If your hardware is down, you make no money !

Lastly, I dont have any miners myself, but from seeing the forum, I see various devices lock up and freeze randomly. You just need to make sure if thats the case, you can automate/semi-automate that procedure to reduce that downtime, and heal itself in 90% of those scenarios (overheating or software glitch)


[Edit]
Another thing I forgot to mention, is that DC in a Cube picture you posted above. I've always loved the idea of those, and think Iceland could work well with that. Ideally you could find an office Park or building that has extra land, and work out a lease for that part of land, and just get power / water to the Cube itself.


If you really wanted to take this to the next step, I'd prefer not using Colo at all. I know in the states many business's have Virtualized, making their 1000sqft+ server rooms almost 90% unutilized. You could easily approach them and ask to rent out part of their DC. If they already paid for the Generators/UPS then you could just bring in racks / bread racks and host the units there. Only thing is you would be responsible to be the "remote hands" and could be woken up at all times of the night

The benefit of this is you may get a better deal as that business isn't using that space currently, even though they spent a lot of money setting it up. Secondly, the cheaper you can get that space, the better for the bitcoin mining field. Again this would most likely only work if you wanted to make a new service out of this as a full-time job, or have someone managing the physical location.


[/Edit]

Wish you the best

kosta

[Puppet]

Puppet,

I hope you don't think I am criticizing what your trying to do. I just wanted to show you my perspective on things as I've been an Systems Engineer of sorts over the last 10 years and have dealt with many hosting facilities in the past.

For example, I worked for a company that made $10,000/minute in some of their applications and downtime between 6AM EST - 2AM EST cost them serious money. When your talking about a Large Scale Bitcoin mining operation, you need to account for when things go bad, not when they work well.

Im planning ahead, and I dont think you see the big picture. RIght now, mining is ludicrously profitable if you look at running cost (electricity/hosting) vs revenue. So for sure people want to pay for UPS and fancy DCs, some will even rather sleep next to their miner because downtime is expensive.

But as difficulty continues to shoot up, and mining hardware prices will drop by one or two orders of magnitude, at some point mining will become only marginally profitable for those with the lowest running costs and essentially it will turn in to a game of converting electricity in to bitcoins with cheap equipment (that can be written off over several years instead of only weeks/months today). Suddenly downtime no longer matters so much, if at all. All that will really matter is running costs. and things like:

The reason the price I got was around $.45/kwh for about 8KW/rack is due to the fact they had superior services/multiple generators / UPS / etc AND Insurance.

Will no longer matter.

Some of the bitcoin mining DC that I've spoken to in the last few months that are starting up, are not even Datacenters. There just warehouses with racks and power, let alone UPS or cooling because "its to expensive" .

Exactly right. Although Im not convinced in the long run a warehouse is actually cheaper than a bare bones modular DC, many factors play a role there. There is only so much you can put in a warehouse without some form of cooling and no way you will get anywhere close to the power density of some of those modular DC's (Ive seen over 1MW in a standard shipping container).

Anyway, to reiterate, right now, its worth paying extra for SLA's, so it makes complete sense to host in a traditional datacenter, but you may as well do it in greenland where its cheaper (and greener). I have no ambition to compete with those traditional datacenters, instead I will try to organize a group buy if that makes sense, or simply advocate existing solutions there.

But at some point next year, miners will want to move away from this "expensive" hosting to cheaper solutions that dont have UPS and diesel generators and do not promise 5 sigma uptime but that could well double or triple their operating margins by putting their gear in warehouses or containers in a location with cheap electricity. Thats what I will be aiming at.