Electric heaters

[vqp]

With the cost of mining being dominated more and more by the electricity bill, I started thinking in embedding miners in these appliances called "electric heaters"  (see pictures http://goo.gl/VC4YNx ), and then sell them at a discount price (bitcoins mined to my address) or full price but with the ability of sending the bitcoins mined to any address. These heaters are not the typical HVAC units that use heat pumps but simple "electricity burners" that are very inefficient. The people buying these would waste the energy anyways.

The miner should be some tiny linux computer such as a raspberry PI with a GPRS modem and an array of bitcoin ASICs that will be insulated and submerged in the oil that these heaters use.

Some numbers:

A heater typically burns 2KW

Assuming a heater stays on for 8 hours a day during 3 months = 720 hours

Asic efficiency 1.73 GH/s per KW  (Black Arrow Prospero X-3)

Total GH/s ~  1.73GH/s x 2KW  ~  3.5 GH/s

Earns x hour ~ 1.48 USD / 24 ~ 0.06 USD  (today)

Earns x year ~ 0.06 * 720 = 44 USD

GSM bill x year ~ 60 USD

So if we are not taking into account the capital expenditure we are almost even. Give one year more and prices of ASICs and all electronics will fall, bitcoin will probably raise and we are on the path to profit.

[Walter Rothbard]

What if the people you sell them to don't supply network access?

[fs2k155]

He said GPRS modem, but that would eat into profits.

I've been considering something similar - using asics to supplement a fish tank heater, which typically runs year-round. If I get something together I'll post about it.

[lucaspm98]

Crazy idea, but it might just work. Everybody complains about the heat and electricity usage, but in your idea neither of those is a negative.

[tom_o]

My heater is my old gaming pc run as a v quiet 300khash 350w miner (cpu is folding too, the more heat the better!)

[sidehack]

1.73GH/KW? Sure you're not off by two or three orders of magnitude?

My (admittedly inefficient) blades are running 108GH/kW. Not sure I follow your math.

[tom_o]

1.73GH/KW? Sure you're not off by two or three orders of magnitude?

My (admittedly inefficient) blades are running 108GH/kW. Not sure I follow your math.

Mining litecoin, it makes 0.17 a day.

[sidehack]

Also, Cubes make excellent space heaters. Relatively quiet and fairly power-dense. Probably gonna fetch more and just leave them in various rooms around the house.

[jojo69]

BFL makes a nice little heater, kind of overpriced though

[crazyates]

BFL makes a nice little heater, kind of overpriced though

And it is kinda noisy. For a space heater.

[rupy]

I'm using my 2 singles for heating. You have to remove everything except the PCB + sinks, redo the thermal paste and add noctua fans; then its silent enough!

You can actually even use the supplied PSU if you're not afraid of electrocuting yourself, just remove the case from the PSU and apply your own fan, though I would not recommend it because the PSU is crap; but I had to use it for a couple of days and after 10 minutes of that really annoying fan I ripped it open.

[Xukanik]

Unless I am missing something but according to the Black Arrow Website the Black Arrow Prospero X-3 cost ~0.5w per Gh/s and provides ~2000Gh/s so a total of ~1000w. But with the added hardware: Controler, LCD screen, Ethernet etc... they claim 1050Watts