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March 29, 2022, 06:34:18 PM |
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Hello, I'm wondering if there are any commercial ASIC mining farm operators located in the U.S., especially Texas, who have negotiated real time (hourly) or day ahead pricing with their utility. I'd also like to know if any farms have old ASICs like the Antminer S9 or Avalon 1146 that are usually unprofitable.
I'm thinking of writing software that takes in real time or next-day grid prices (preferrably ERCOT) and can remotely turn less efficient ASIC miners on/off depending on what the power cost is. I'm hoping that these old miners can be profitable if they run overnight, or when power is cheap enough.
I have done some preliminary calculations. For a medium-sized farm using at least 100 kW, it looks like you can get a 200-day ROI on a used $350 Antminer S9 as long as power costs < 4¢/kWh (uptime = 60-70%). Basically, it would be turned off during the afternoon and evening or during heat waves in the summer. This accounts for the higher demand charge for having a 60-70% load factor instead of running 24/7 and getting 99%. The demand charge averages 2¢ and the energy charge averages 2¢ during that 60-70% period of runtime.
You would probably have to plug in a small Raspberry Pi to the same LAN as the miners, and my backend would broadcast commands to perform the switching. Yes, the miners are less efficient, but heat is less of a concern because the weather tends to be cooler when electric prices are lower.
Would anybody with these older ASICs be interested in such a service instead of recycling them? If not, I'm thinking of starting my own warehouse with a few dozen used 16nm ASICs and seeing how it goes. 200 days seems really good for SHA-256 mining, and with ETH going to PoS, this might be a good investment.
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