I quit alt mining

[GhostRider25]

that's why you have batteries, to store up the energy collected during the day to use later.  you can find batteries real cheap often free too,  a wire gets pinched or a cell dies and the whole thing gets warrantied, they chunk the old one, give the customer a new one, again, with a little know how, open it up, replace the bms, a new 48v 100 ah will run you maybe 75 dollars, or replace the bad cell, charge and balance and you again, are good to go.

my current setup, i got 24 kw of panels and 96 kw/hr of battery.  my 5 volcminers pull about 60 kw a day. i can go 2 rainy days before it dumps out for good. even on shitty days you get some power it's not totally dark.  with a little switch voo doo you can even pull power on a bright moonlit night.   

again, paying for this, no you wont break even, but if you can get a lot of the stuff for free / near free, it's an option.

check battery stores, they tend to get a ton of lith's they are happy to be rid of for free.  the la's recycle,  liths no longer and the ferro chems never did really for some reason.

Aaron

[FP91G]

This is a good option for household needs or when breakdowns won't damage expensive equipment.
If you buy ASICs for $3,000-$5,000 and install batteries of dubious quality into the network, then as an engineer, I'll be shocked. I've seen a lot of defective products from China. I have seen cases where such savings lead to fires or other serious damage. With a constant consumption of tens of kilowatts, any mistake can be very expensive.

[GhostRider25]

and, as an engineer, im assuming a junior one by the mindset.  you did not fully read or comprehend what was said.  just jumped to a conclusion, so typical with these impatient kids nowadays.

here ill spell it out for you, ill even use crayons if that helps.

check the battery, why did it fail? many times the bms goes bad, you replace it.  or a wire gets pinched, which eventually causes a low cell, fix-replace it.  occasionally a cell itself is bad, replace that cell.  The rest is fine.  put it together, test it and if it's good, use it.  They don't like to say they let a shitty battery out of the factory so will make up cute terms like oh it had 'infant mortality' etc, but basically, once in a while, a lemon gets by.    now obviously this is not going to be every battery you get, but once you've done this a few times, you can spot the good ones and the boat anchors real fast.  im getting 24v / 36v  48v 80 ah,  100 / 105 ah    200 ah batteries ..refurbishing them for maybe 100 dollars in time/effort and they are good.  been running some of them going on 5 years now, not a hitch.

if it's swollen, liquid dripping out, damaged, looks like it tried to start on fire, then no you probably don't want that one.
This is not for everyone, in fact id not recommend anyone do it if they don't have a fully functioning brain and a solid knowledge of battery maintenance.  Also, if you are working on hv packs, like out of cars, you'll kill yourself very easy when you come across a 400 volt rail the wrong way.

im wondering if there's a way to get hands on bad asic cards.  where someone burnt up maybe a hand full of chips w/o physically scorching the mb.  They'll replace a few chips for you, but if you need a hand full it's not worth the labor time, and you are better off just honking a new board.  For someone with time, some 2m / 3m experience refurb the board. it may not be at full 130 percent, but if you can get say 90 percent out of it, and instead of paying 3000 for it, you payd 300, then you did ok.

Sometimes just doing things to be able to say, look what i did and it works too, is payback enough.

aaron

[Aur(cipher)]

I totally agree with the sentiment that mining has become too industrial, but I don't think PoW is dead for home miners yet. The problem is that most new projects follow the same path of ASIC dominance too early.
I’ve been following (and developing) a project called Aureus (AUR) which is specifically aiming to keep PoW accessible and fair. It’s a sovereign SHA-256 chain, but because it's still in its early stages (around 38k blocks), it's actually possible for smaller miners to participate and secure the network without needing a massive warehouse in Siberia.
If we want to preserve the "real values of decentralization" that @Abiky mentioned, we need to support these types of grassroots PoW projects before they get swallowed by the whales. It’s not always about chasing the "gravy train," it's about building a network where home equipment still matters.

[FP91G]

and, as an engineer, im assuming a junior one by the mindset.  you did not fully read or comprehend what was said.  just jumped to a conclusion, so typical with these impatient kids nowadays.

here ill spell it out for you, ill even use crayons if that helps.

check the battery, why did it fail? many times the bms goes bad, you replace it.  or a wire gets pinched, which eventually causes a low cell, fix-replace it.  occasionally a cell itself is bad, replace that cell.  The rest is fine.  put it together, test it and if it's good, use it.  They don't like to say they let a shitty battery out of the factory so will make up cute terms like oh it had 'infant mortality' etc, but basically, once in a while, a lemon gets by.    now obviously this is not going to be every battery you get, but once you've done this a few times, you can spot the good ones and the boat anchors real fast.  im getting 24v / 36v  48v 80 ah,  100 / 105 ah    200 ah batteries ..refurbishing them for maybe 100 dollars in time/effort and they are good.  been running some of them going on 5 years now, not a hitch.

if it's swollen, liquid dripping out, damaged, looks like it tried to start on fire, then no you probably don't want that one.
This is not for everyone, in fact id not recommend anyone do it if they don't have a fully functioning brain and a solid knowledge of battery maintenance.  Also, if you are working on hv packs, like out of cars, you'll kill yourself very easy when you come across a 400 volt rail the wrong way.

im wondering if there's a way to get hands on bad asic cards.  where someone burnt up maybe a hand full of chips w/o physically scorching the mb.  They'll replace a few chips for you, but if you need a hand full it's not worth the labor time, and you are better off just honking a new board.  For someone with time, some 2m / 3m experience refurb the board. it may not be at full 130 percent, but if you can get say 90 percent out of it, and instead of paying 3000 for it, you payd 300, then you did ok.

Sometimes just doing things to be able to say, look what i did and it works too, is payback enough.

aaron

I have extensive experience as an engineer. You're describing a very rare case of failure where something can be repaired by replacing one component and it will last a long time. But in my experience, this is rare. We even experimented with buying decommissioned equipment from companies and trying to repair and resell it. Firstly, those companies also had engineers who had already taken all the best parts. We ended up buying a lot of junk and then reselling it for a long time. Your idea works if you get first access to used hardware.
Maybe your engineers are lazy or don't have the time, but at our service center, for example, they'll even disassemble a dead laptop battery because it might still contain working parts. They'll only give you the junk that the engineers are too lazy to throw away for free.

[GhostRider25]

ive been doing it for a few years now and got almost 100 kw of free battery storage from it.  people buy storage batteries, lets say 1 in 1000 die in say a year.  most the times its a bad bms, that's the most common failure.  bad cell is another, the cell just shits itself after a few months, this causes it to swing wildly and can also take out the bms due to continuous excessive balance current to it burning out the bms or an arm of it.  they bring it back in, the manu does NOT want it back, between shipping a damaged battery, which they MUST declare if they know (they do) it's insanely expensive because of the risk IF they can find someone to do it.  They'll tell the seller, make sure it's really bad, give us the serial number, take a few pictures, and give them a new battery, dispose of the old one.  He then gives me the battery.

i use a laser to cut it open, i have found it's the easiest and quickest, i can zing the case open w/o tearing up stuff inside.  many of the bigger ones, they are not welded cases and you can literally undo some screws and get to them.  open up remove battery pack, see what went wrong, fix it, repack and you got a rebuilt battery for free that should last a long time.  a bms can be daisy chained, you'll understand when you see one, so youcan take two that may have bad sections,  and horkle them together to serve one battery. use one  channel as a crossover bridge to cover the whole battery.

i keep mine in a steel shed, i have breakers on every battery, if one decides to nuke, it in theory, ive never tested it for real, should trip itself out, isolating from the rest, so it may melt down, it's also isolated from the other batteries, so let it cook, the rest are safe.  also have a 30 lb co2 bottle which will easily fill the trailer if i do get an incident, i can trip it's valve remotely via my phone if i need.  it won't stop a lith fire but will keep it from going to others.

since this is just for me, i don't have to worry about it being closed in, or looking pretty,.. so trust me.  it aint pretty unless you are a tinkering type like i am

aaron

[FP91G]

In my country, if there's an authorized service center, no replacements will be made without their approval. Authorized service centers also have their own replacement limits, otherwise it will impact performance.
The service center sends decommissioned devices to the supplier for quality control. If this is different for you, I'm glad you were able to receive free batteries.