Adjusting Miner Mode depending on powerplant outpout

[moriss]

First post, so: Hi everybody!

I'm about to start mining in our small hydro power plant.

I was wondering if anybody is doing automatic mining mode switching, dependent on the amount of power a generator is producing at a given moment.

For example:

if plant output is greater than 20KW -> mine using turbo mode
if plant output falls below 20KW -> start switching miners into economic mode - one by one
if plant output falls below lower treshold -> start turning mininers off completely

that should happen automatically to avoid the situation that the plant starts drawing power from the grid instead of feeding it.

as this is going to be a rather small farm i've got a feeling it doesn't make sense to put a lot of effort into developing our own automation setup, that's why i'm hoping to maybe hear from other hydro operators how they are solving this issue.

curious to hear your thoughts. thx!

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[philipma1957]

It would be easier to turn them off.

Let’s say you have 9 s17s pulling 20000 watts.

Rather then switch to low speed turn two off.

You only need to operate a few pdus that can be shut down .  Much easier for that action.

[Artemis3]

That just came in the bOS channel, there is people lowering the speed of chips as an alternative of powering off (if no pdu/breaker with remote control).

I have done this and it works fine.  200Mhz @ 7.9V, 360W, 4.2TH.  85W/TH

Less efficient than yours, but pulling way less power

Goal would be to find the setting where the boards remain hashing but with the smallest power and noise use, even if its not the most efficient (ie. not 80W/T). This begs for experimentation...

The idea being: when certain condition occurs, swap cgminer.conf with these settings for "low power mode" (since S9s can't be turned off on their own).

I assume OP has the plant connected to a grid tie inverter and is currently (also) freely drawing from the grid as needed...

I have no idea if the hydro plant can somehow communicate this condition to a computer to act upon. I suppose it does, or maybe the grid tie inverter itself?

[moriss]

You only need to operate a few pdus that can be shut down .  Much easier for that action.

wouldn't just cutting the power supply damage the hardware in the long run?

do recent asics even have the ability of a software shutdown and remote reboot?

thx for your input. doing it via pdus would definitely be possible and easy to implement.

I assume OP has the plant connected to a grid tie inverter and is currently (also) freely drawing from the grid as needed...

I have no idea if the hydro plant can somehow communicate this condition to a computer to act upon. I suppose it does, or maybe the grid tie inverter itself?

yes, the miners need to halt immediately if power generation is lower than what they demand, otherwhise they plant will draw energy from the grid at market price.

we do have analog signals, which could be used to operate PDUs in case the plant shuts down (due to emergency or maintainance for example). that would be easy. it should also be possible to get digital data from the control unit about the amount of power generated, which could be used for doing software controlled action.

[Artemis3]

Unfortunately i don't know of any Asic miner with software shutdown, all they can do is restart, and if you go the Braiins OS firmware route, you could in theory reduce its consumption significantly but not completely turn it off. If it is of any help, think that each miner could change from pulling 1400w into 360w with that trick, depending on how many you have, it might be easier to do it this way.

All you need is to do is run a script in the miner itself to poll the power condition, and act upon it. In your case i would have two cgminer.conf files ready, one for normal condition, and another for low power condition, and switch accordingly. The script would just run off cron periodically as often as you want (just don't run it every second, please). Software changing the speed is rather simple and painless, it only restarts cgminer.

The only other alternative is as you said, turn on and off the PDUs. If you go that way, try to use different delays for each PDU, avoid having all of them go on and off at the same time...

[PassThePopcorn]

Eww 360w per miner. To the OP just make sure there is no IP preventing you from doing what you want to do. But everything you want to do is possible.

[Artemis3]

Eww 360w per miner. To the OP just make sure there is no IP preventing you from doing what you want to do. But everything you want to do is possible.

That setting wasn't the most optimal, 85W/T, but the idea was simply to lower the power and noise, which is what op wants. You can find a more optimal config, or an even lower power consumption at even worse efficiency that lets the boards some hashing instead of "idling" in "consume a lot" mode...

Or a poor man's sleep mode.

[PassThePopcorn]

I mean I can get them to 20w not running and fairly stable at 80w at about 600w per miner @ about 8-9th, we don't usually go that low.

My response was simply everything he wants to do is 100% possible but he should look to see if there isn't anything that legally prevents him or poses a risk to the power companies financially.

[Artemis3]

What speeds and voltages are you using?

360w is for the whole unit which is almost half of yours.

And yes the idea is to do something akin to turning it off, but you could tweak it more depending on electric capacity. That's the beauty of having full control of the chip speeds and voltages.

[PassThePopcorn]

I'm well aware of what he is trying to do, I have that control over my miners, as well most of it automated to the conditions provided by the provider. As to the voltages I'm not sure I only tested it for a short period of time on the lower settings currently they are set to about 1400w @ 17th the average frequencies are in the higher side of 700's and voltages are mid-high range 800's (I'm not going to list out all 189 chips). As for efficiency based on what the goal is (to match supply) that doesn't factor in, if it does your not working with a good power provider. Reaction time (matching) is almost immediately after the provider sends the request, the only thing quicker is if they shut down power instead of sending the request, but then coming back up becomes an issue which is what they are trying to avoid.
So the option is send request -> lower power -> send request -> raise power.
Or
Cut power wait for power to be restored (causes issues with providers due to the time it takes to come back online and possible high load surges) Think about it do you want to have a multi MW load come up all at once?

Edit: I was able to get 80w/th @ 1100w with ~13-14th/s