Solar/Wind powered GPU farm

[TanzoFett]

Hello everyone out there,

I'm trying to work out the feasibility of an idea I had.

I want to own a house, but in this economy and with my terrible finances, I doubt I will ever be able to.
So instead of stressing myself out worrying, I decided to have a go at planning something functional and at least theoretically do-able.

Here's the basics:

An acre or two of land, preferably with a stream or creek running through it and at least one spot with higher elevation.
I'd like to build a warehouse/barn into the side of the hill, using the hill as both the elevation needed for small scale wind turbines and as a thermal mass.
As long as the warehouse is running east/west from the hill there should be a south facing roof (im in canada so definitely need south facing for solar).

My first question here is in order to run a gpu mining rig including some serious cooling fans, how much energy is needed on average?
I know the answer is out there in the internet but everyone here seems to have a much better grasp on it than most people, that's why I'm here asking.

Second question, which Altcoin should the gpu miners be mining? Obviously this can be in terms of future potential vs current potential as any chance I have to do this will be a long while.

This is just one part of my plans, they also include aquaculture/hydroculture farms for sprouts, veggies and fish. Obviously compost and other byproducts could be used/sold. Kind of like how rabbit poop is saleable by the pound in some parts of the world.

I also want the acre to have a family home, proper 4 bedroom raise your kids in warmth kind of home. Along with this, I was thinking of having some tiny homes on the property for family members and or employees.

The entire idea also relies on NOT being out in the middle of nowhere unless Elon's Starlink can give a solid internet connection... then maybe? I guess?
But I'd want to have green spaces and fibre optic internet, food production and streaming capabilities.

I think these things can be done, and I am stating it here that I will find a way to do it.

But I'm off topic, I will highlight the two questions above.
And I encourage people to pick the idea apart.
The only way it gets better is by it being challenged - show me how and where I am wrong and I will solve for that problem and improve.

Tanzo

[Metroid]

Good wind turbines are around 2 millions dollars, best ones are around 7 million dollars, plus you need to see a proper place for a wind turbine, places with 50km hour or more and I think some countries need a special permission to place them.

Solar is the same thing, need to be a good place like in Texas US or Sahara Desert in North Africa or some parts in Australia where there are very high concentrations of UV rays and need to be grid-tied.

Solar is cheaper but harder to manage and less efficient because only active on sun hours, wind is the winner here but cost is too high to start off and the maintenance is very expensive.

I would rather invest in something else.

Start small, think big hehe

[fmz89]

well solar farm is less maintain the hardware rather than generator electric base, but less profit

i think hydro turbin is the biggest profit and cheaper way to get, but depend on your country regulation and buying the place on riverside is not easy to get

solar you  can do any where in any country, but keep in mind ambient temperature place , like dessert not friendly to mine crypto for the hardware , efficency depend on ambient temperature

[aesma]

Hello and welcome. The first question with solar is what do you do at night (add winter for Canada) ? Do you simply turn off the miners, do you run on batteries charged during the day, or do you use the utilities. I know in Québec they have cheap hydro so maybe making your own electricity isn't worth it ?

[TanzoFett]

There are small scale wind turbines available.
here's a quick link -> https://ecavo.com/best-home-wind-turbines/#best-1

not a small investment but definitely in the range of purchasing property kind of money
1500W for something around 3,000 CDN

solar can still be effectively used in canada, especially with some of the newer panels out there
and I'm in ontario... much more expensive power here than in quebec... 11-25cents per kw/h I think, I'll have to check

I was contemplating either a battery system to store the extra daytime power, because yes night time does kind of slow down solar a bit
however, I did want to see about just hooking into the grid and becoming a daytime producer and night time consumer sort of idea

the ultimate question is whether or not the power can be used efficiently enough to warrant hooking some miners up to it

since its still in the concept phase, let's assume the following things:

The location has an easy south facing angle
the wind is average, not enough for a major installation but enough for even a 1-2kw system
I know some of the hydro turbines out there for consumers can be upwards of 5kw but I think they come in at 10k$ ish

I haven't been able to get back to work since covid started, most of my notes on power generating systems are there


**

winter in canada was something of an offshoot idea...
geothermal heating/cooling is possible, and as long as the miners are going, heat won't be a problem lol

I do expect to still be hooked to the grid and have to pay for power somewhat

it would be a balancing act for sure, feasibility of green energy solutions and whether those systems can power the miners as required
and still provide basic power needs

its late and I'm rambling a bit... so I'll stop here and clean up my thoughts in the morning
thank you for the answers so far!
I'm glad I'm not just yelling into the dark

[safar1980]

I don’t understand the economic feasibility of mining at an electricity cost of 11-25 cents per kWh.
Solar panels or wind fans will not provide the required power and you will have to pay part of the electricity at high tariffs. Buying additional equipment and reducing profit when mining will make your investments unprofitable.
And if cryptocurrency prices fall, you will be in trouble.

[aesma]

Hydro Toronto gives this :

On-peak   Weekdays from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 5 p.m to 7 p.m.   21.7¢ per kWh
Mid-peak   Weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.   15.0¢ per kWh
Off-peak   Weekdays from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and all day weekends and holidays   10.5¢ per kWh

That's an average of 13,3c/kWh. In Canadian dollars, so 10,21c in USD. Pretty cheap still, in France it's more than 50% more, in Germany it's 6 or 7 times more.

When producing your own electricity, you must look at government schemes, these will tell you what's best. For example if you can sell the electricity back to the utility, is the price competitive ? If they take it at 5 cents, it's not worth it. In some countries you can only sell what you don't use, in other countries you can't use what you produce, it's quite messy.

What I will say is that mining is a business in itself, and making electricity (let alone storing it) is another business.

It's possible to combine the two, but you need massive scale for it to really make sense.

[TanzoFett]

yeah Veridian is about the same East of Toronto
though the Ontario government has made an option to flat rate get 14c/kwh
as long as you use less than 1,000 kw/h per month

i never expect it all to function perfectly right off the bat

i guess if you think of it as im going to own a house anyway
the wind is going to blow and the sun is going to shine anyway
over time can harnessing that and using it for mining or anything else reduce the cost of maintaining that property
it doesnt have to be profitable on its own... im not looking to generate an income

here:

lets say mortgage is $1500/mth
property tax is $600/mth
electricity is $200/mth
gas is $120/mth
food is $1000/mth for 6 people
internet is $120/mth for actually good internet
debt servicing (credit cards and bank fees etc) is $100/mth
misc bills are $200/mth
misc waste/other costs are $200/mth

that is $4040/mth in expenses

to me, paying $2000 for wind or solar that reduces my electricity by even $20/mth will pay itself off in less than ten years
granted good luck and low maintenance etc... obviously

is there a calculator out there to figure out how a generator system can affect final electricity bills?
or one to determine how many kw/h per month something will generate? I've found some but I'd like to see if you guys know any

in terms of crypto, what if it was more like setting up a Dash node, operating a node is not nearly as energy intensive as POW mining with ASICs
obviously the restriction here is getting 1000 DASH, which is pricey
I don't know a lot about that stuff but would that be a more viable option?

so far it seems mining PoW is nearly pointless in the small scale as I'm thinking

[Metroid]

There are small scale wind turbines available.
here's a quick link -> https://ecavo.com/best-home-wind-turbines/#best-1

not a small investment but definitely in the range of purchasing property kind of money
1500W for something around 3,000 CDN

None of those are good, more maintenance than actually useful, I'm talking about turbines like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUjCD-fFU9k ,
https://www.intelligentliving.co/worlds-biggest-wind-turbine/

This could be helpful for maintenance https://interestingengineering.com/maintenance-robot-walks-on-a-wind-turbines-blade-in-a-world-first

[TanzoFett]

lol definitely more power than I was thinking

however... even with a price tag that high, its not unreachable in terms of speculation
i'll make myself a version of my plan that incorporates one just for funsies

[Metroid]

lol definitely more power than I was thinking

however... even with a price tag that high, its not unreachable in terms of speculation
i'll make myself a version of my plan that incorporates one just for funsies

that is how large scale mining is hehe

[aesma]

TanzoFett : don't know about calculators but there is a good return from going DIY with solar at least, including batteries. There are videos on youtube of people buying used cylindrical lithium cells and using them to make batteries charged from their solar install, much cheaper than Tesla powerwall and similar.

I bought some miners years ago and planned a small farm, but I never got to it, because I needed to rent a garage or something like that, then I needed a crazy electricity installation, then I needed to set up a company for all that, and the little returns for all that would basically all go to the taxman. I sold the miners instead...

GPU mining is better as at least the graphic cards keep some value over time.

[FloridaKid]

It doesn't make sense to build solar mining because you will never make back for invested money, mining isn't profitable like years ago, to make good profits today you need to have free electricity, complete waste of time IMO

[aesma]

I looked at it where I live in France and there are incentives to building solar arrays. The sweet spot is 100kWp, that gets you 9000€ from the government. Then you have to choose if you use the electricity and sell the surplus, or sell everything. Strangely enough the price is higher if you sell everything, at 10 eurocents/kWh, compared to only 6 eurocents if you sell only the surplus.

So combining this with a mining farm would be quite the headache, I think if would work better as a side investment, for example you build/buy a hangar with solar panels on the roof earning you money from the electricity, and you use the hangar for your mining farm. The hangar would probably be too big for just that, so find other uses to it, you could put self storage boxes in it, for example, and rent them out.

You would need significant capital to set this up though.

[OgNasty]

I'm doing something along the lines of what you're mentioning.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1783328.0

I think green energy is nice and it's great to think about a free income source like mining with free electricity.  However, it isn't really feasible because of the amount of energy that miners use and the instability of green energy.  Sure, you can install a battery like I have, and get multiple sources of green energy, but in the end I think that the effort involved and miniscule savings will make it worth it only for environmental reasons.  Still a great discussion.