Renewable Mining Farm [Build vs. Rent]

[HodlHash]

Does anyone have experience investing in renewable energy generation (solar panel, wind turbine, etc.) and subsequently using that energy to mine bitcoin?

I'm trying to think of how to invest in the space with a slight edge across what I think are the main variables driving margin, most notably cost of energy. I do believe the long-term price of Bitcoin will be massive, and therefore don't view it as entirely necessary to have positive interim yield from mining (i.e., I'd be happy to mine bitcoin at a short-term loss so long as that loss equates to a smaller per unit cost of bitcoin acquired vs. buying the coin directly). However, I'd prefer to structure the economics where I can have positive interim cash flow almost irrespective of the initial investment - that is, I think so long as the yield is positive, I'll eventually recoup the initial investment and then some.

What are the merits of setting up your own facility, particularly if you can access cheap power, vs. paying for a hosting service? I'm new to the space and looking to get general opinions here.

Thanks all. Happy mining.

[mindrust]

Batteries are the problem. You can’t use renewable energy right away. You need to store the electricity in batteries first but batteries have life cycles and ASIC miners are power hungry. So that means you’ll be eating up your batteries way too fast and they’ll die too fast.

It might work if you use a few gpu’s or similar less power hungry miners but then you’ll be mining pennies.

Selling the energy to the gov is a better idea. Save yourself from lots of trouble.

[mikeywith]

What are the merits of setting up your own facility, particularly if you can access cheap power, vs. paying for a hosting service?

Hosting is generally risky due to a few reasons that have been discussed in depth here, but mainly, it's the host's greed that could screw you, if the market conditions are bad, and the ROI is way too long, the host would be happy to have your gears running, at some point, when ROI is very short the host would rather run his own or charge you more because, for one, they would know you now make more profit and two, because they can.

This isn't the case with every host but if you read all the stories you will find more sad endings than happy ones, in general, you should always try to avoid hosting.

As for building your own infrastructure, it really depends on what your budget is, I think if it's not a few million $ -- you won't be able to build anything that would have a great ROI, simply put, there is some common cost which doesn't differ much between running say 100 miners and 500 of them, splitting that cost between 500 vs a 100 would make a huge difference.

A middle ground would be renting a warehouse/hangar/land with a long-term contract and sourcing power directly from a power provider.

[NotATether]

Whatever you can't sell, to the government or to any other customer, I guess you can look at mining Bitcoin with that - assuming you own the place - and as long as you can at least recoup the costs of the mining hardware + shipping (as the electricity is almost free) and have a net profit greater than an a rounding error, it is something you can explore.