Advice needed on scaling hobby mining into small farm

[farmerjake]

I've reached the point with mining where I would like to scale up from my hobby operation into a small dedicated facility. I'm not looking to make this my full time job, but certainly have enough time to dedicate to building it. I'm looking at under 100 units, likely starting out around 40 or so and reinvesting profits. Not looking to build a huge farm at this time. I understand now isn't the best time to start this in many ways, however I've spent some time on risk/reward and it seems worthwhile to me.

The state I am located in has high power costs, so I'll be renting space in a neighboring state for better power rates. As such, I want to make sure I have all my bases covered so I don't have to make more trips out than needed. I understand the basics of what I'll need in terms of permits/licensing from my other businesses, but mining has higher power requirements than what I do now, so I just don't want to miss a step in my planning stage that I wind up paying for later.

The steps I have, in chronological-ish order. This doesn't include obvious things like buy miners, shelves, fans, form LLC, etc...

1. Reach out to power company to determine exact rates and availability, make sure the use is permitted in the area I'm looking at and that adequate power is available.

2. Contact the city I'm planning to locate this facility in, ensure that there will not be licensing issues. - Not sure if there is anything special I should be looking out for at this step. Some cities I have businesses in have been very problematic with licensing for various operations. On the fence as to whether I should present it as a bitcoin mining operation, or a datacenter.

3. Find/rent a space. Looking at industrial flex space-type properties. Most of what I am familiar with is typically equipped with ~ 200A/220V power. This probably is sufficient to start, barely, around 40,000W of power for miners and 1500W of power for cooling. As far as scaling beyond this, is there anything specific to look out for as the ability to bring in more power?

4. Set up skeleton of facility. Racks, PDUs, etc. Schedule inspections, fire marshal, etc... while property is in the process of being set up, before the installation of additional outlets or modifications to the building.

5. Install 30A outlets, start up units.

I figure this initial setup should take around 3 months, and cost somewhere around $50K all in. Planning on running the current gen bitmain hardware, mixed units.
I don't really intend to sell anything I mine other than what is absolutely needed to cover expenses. Break even should be somewhere around 180 days with a 15% avg difficulty increase monthly and 2% increasing coin prices monthly according to mycryptobuddy calc. Power cost should be around ~.06/kw

Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

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[ccgllc]

2)  Tell them your building a Tier 1 datacenter (that is the lowest tech level, but they will likely not know that).  Its a lot less explaining than Bitcoin mining.

3)  200A drives 20 miners.  1500W for cooling isn't going to buy you more than a few fans, its not enough to do AC for 20 miners.  Remember you are dealing with a continuous load, so 200A service can not legally be loaded to more than 160 amps (80% rule on breakers).

Spend some time building an Excel spreadsheet that does all the power math for you - it will let you play with options and think in terms of groups of miner.  Remember that 12 gauge 20amp wire is a LOT easier to work with than 10 gauge 30 amp wire.

Keep it simple:  One 20 amp breaker wired to one duplex 220V receptacle which support (2) S9 class miners at around 14amp of the 16amp max you can pull on that breaker.  Ten breakers per 200amp panel.

Figure out how your going to cool.  Hopefully your looking in a northern state with air temps < 85F most of the year.  A few days of 95F is likely not going to kill you, anything over 104F and you need to shutdown.   Plan on 300 CF of air movement PER s9.  I'd recommend keeping the linear air velocity below 500 ft/min or you will start to suck things into your filters.

Work ALL the details out in advance - number of miners, hot/cold aisle arrangements, air flow, network, UPS for network switches, sources for network cables/power cables/receptacles/etc., racks and associated layout, ...

I can tell you that 200 S9 units is pretty much a full time job.  Less so if you use Avalons.  Spent 7 hours with half my farm down today tracking down a semi-functional core switch that was a pain to isolate - figure out how you will deal with such issues.

Consider software like Awesome Miner onsite to help you manage your farm.  Know how to setup, or have someone setup, a VPN from your house to the data center, presuming you don't live within walking distance.

Do NOT enable access to your miners from the Internet or you will lose control of them within minutes.