Solar powered mining only during sunlight and without batteries

[mikeywith]

Yeah a total mess but I can see where it came from, he said he bought a small panel that had a USB port, this is where the confusion started, there are a ton of small foldable panels on Amazon that have a DC output for charging phones or laptops, and there are small solar panels for security cameras also, as all of them run on DC on either 12 or 15W.

It's hard to tell how someone got confused, but sure that mindrust isn't the average "post anything" kind of member, so I am sure something confused him along the way, I believe it's the fact that miners do indeed need DC, so to someone who doesn't understand much about the subject, they would not think that DC devices need AC power input, the logic behind it is not easy to understad.

Back to the issue at hand, I'm not sure how he is running those asics on 10kw panels

Hard to tell how does he operates, his battery has the capctity of 28,800Kwh, so nearly 3 hours for the set up assuming 100% DoD, but if I had to guess, he is probably not running them at stock settings, S9s can run on Low-Power-Mode doing 750w range, L3s 600w range, and S19 1800w range. so we are talking 30-40% less power consumption for the whole set up, but let's hear from him.

[Wildmanfarm]

I am no electrician but I think the electricity you get from the panels is alternating current (AC). Which means the voltage of that current isn't stable. You have to store it on a battery first so you can have a direct current/stable voltage (DC) which you can use to power up most electrical devices and as far as I know, bitcoin miners also run on DC.

You have got them mixed up, solar panels generate low voltage DC, asicminers just like most other electronics require AC at the PSU input, the PSU of course will have to convert that AC to DC to run the miner's chips, but you can't just feed the miner with DC and expect it to work, it won't for so many reasons that are not best fit in this topic.

Yeah you string the panels going to maybe 72dc  and then the invertor changes them to 240 ac or 120 ac.

If you want the exotic inverters that did not work with solar to inverter to 12 volt dc to l3's or s9's I can ask my partner to source the name.  But they did not work.

Maybe 2016 or 2017 was the summer we wasted 2 months doing tests.

the dog house was like this one.

https://www.chewy.com/frisco-dome-dog-house/dp/268388


I would need to spend time finding the actual failed parts so no one uses them.

I have been in the offgrid industry for 30 years and seen it change a lot, Solar and Battery Technology has changed a lot in the last 5 years.
The old panels used to use DC 12v nominal so going into a 12v battery was easy with a charge controller - but these installs were small by todays installs.

Each of my panels put out 35v DC and I have 10 in series giving 350v into the Changer Unit.  I have 4 Banks of solar at the moment.
The Charger goes into a 48v battery, this higher voltage is needed to lower the current.  I have big 250 Amp Fuses on each battery bank. if I was to use 12v battery then a 1000 Amp fuse would be needed - not safe.

For this reason it is not advised to just run straight into a L3 or S9, you should still use an inverter and the PSU for the Miner.
eg 1000w S9 can have 83 amps at 12v going into it, hence the multiple groups of wires.   And the wire length should be short to avoid voltage drop. so this limits how far away a battery can be from miners.

You can get combined Inverters and chargers for $800+ USD that can handle 5000W.  Cheaper than my first 4 solar panels 30 years ago.

[Litzki1990]

Generally, the equipment used in mining requires high voltage current. If this line is connected to a power plant, the electricity bill is very expensive for miners, so many miners decide to use solar power to carry out their mining operations. But there are many challenges to be faced in performing this mining operation through solar panels using solar energy. Because the solar panels have to be installed in a place where there is a lot of sunlight, but if the sunlight falls for 12 hours, then how will the mining work be done when the remaining 12 hours are dark. 
The energy stored through the battery will not provide good support for mining. And one more thing is that many times the sky is cloudy and it rains, when there is not enough sunlight, enough voltage will not be sent to the mining plant, which will disrupt the mining operation. So these things must be considered before starting mining with the help of solar.

[Agbe]

 Op that will depend on the country geographical zone. There are some places that you can't use solar panels without battery to mine bitcoin. Places like Niger Delta in Nigeria. That place is rain forest, though sun came out but it is not that heat that you need to mine bitcoin. So it is only a place that has hot sun from morning till evening can use solar panels without battery if not it won't work. Just the example I gave above, if you must use solar system then battery must follow for backup so in case the sun light is weak the battery can sustain the machine for the main time. The voltage of the mining machine is high and the machine needs a voltage that can sustain it for a period of time.

[machiavelli]

I just thought about this and would like to know if I can just switch my miner on and off and only mine during sun hour's, or will that not work at all? I could ask chatgpt but I'm a little old-school and want a human answer.

I don't know how the pools evolved over time. I guess I'm not getting any reward (tx fees, mining reward, etc.) if I am not connected 24/7?

That is actually sad/bad and holding back decentralisation and indie miners, because the resources needed to become sustainable are

Electricity and Internet. Both is still really expensive, especially in regions that actually have sun.

Bitcoin still does not have it's inception in the places needed the most, because there is no way you can spin on a ASIC miner (even if you could afford or get it gifted), and then have a stable and affordable internet connection and free electric (only day time).

But if we can do mining on day, get paid, have starlink or something, we might get there. I'm definitely here to try and it would serve Bitcoin extremely well if the community manages more decentralisation through home-nodes and miners and maybe a new internet protocol on top like threefold is doing it.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

I don't know how the pools evolved over time. I guess I'm not getting any reward (tx fees, mining reward, etc.) if I am not connected 24/7?

Yes you do get rewards. Most pools take at least a 1-day average hash rate to determine the % of pool work you do and have a minimum withdrawal limit so the time you DO spend mining means it just takes longer vs running 24x7 to reach the limit.

[philipma1957]

I just thought about this and would like to know if I can just switch my miner on and off and only mine during sun hour's, or will that not work at all? I could ask chatgpt but I'm a little old-school and want a human answer.

I don't know how the pools evolved over time. I guess I'm not getting any reward (tx fees, mining reward, etc.) if I am not connected 24/7?

That is actually sad/bad and holding back decentralisation and indie miners, because the resources needed to become sustainable are

Electricity and Internet. Both is still really expensive, especially in regions that actually have sun.

Bitcoin still does not have it's inception in the places needed the most, because there is no way you can spin on a ASIC miner (even if you could afford or get it gifted), and then have a stable and affordable internet connection and free electric (only day time).

But if we can do mining on day, get paid, have starlink or something, we might get there. I'm definitely here to try and it would serve Bitcoin extremely well if the community manages more decentralisation through home-nodes and miners and maybe a new internet protocol on top like threefold is doing it.

nicehash
viabtc

would work for you

[Outhue]

There's been numerous heated discussions comparing solar power and grid power.
One thing that I have never seen being discussed is using solar panels without batteries, and mining only during sunlight, and not grid tied. 

Ideally, everything would work great when there is full sunlight and the solar panels are producing electricity at full capacity.

The part that I don't know is what might happen in the morning or evening when the sun is low in the sky and the solar panels are only generating a fraction of its capacity. 

Just for argument's sake, let's say the mining rig is an Antminer S1 drawing 300-watts of power at 12VDC and two 12V 300-watt solar panels providing 600-watts of power during peak sunlight.

My question is, what will happen in the morning and evening when the solar panels are only producing, say, 100-watts of power? Will the Antminer S1 work at a much lower hash rate? Or could it be damaged due to insufficient power? What if during the day, dark clouds came rolling in and the power fluctuates between 50-watts and 400-watts?

Is there some kind of pre-built device or protection circuit that can regulate the power to at least 300-watts? I suppose a small battery can be added just to normalize fluctuations so that the regulator won't cycle the power too frequently.

Short answer.

You need batteries anyway.

Your hardware will keep going on and off without batteries.

I will advice you to go for cheap batteries if you plan to use grid and sun only, buy used batteries that still have some 65% life left in them, you won't be spending much on them, just to keep the hardwares running while the sun keeps fluctuating up and down..

Goodluck in your mining adventure.

[FP91G]

I think that such mining is possible somewhere in the desert, where the sun shines constantly and there are very few clouds and rain. But without additional batteries and a backup power source, the equipment will be very unstable. You need to consider what the payback will be if the ASICs work only 12 hours a day.

[crusher72]

I like your thinking...I tried it myself.


I used a few different approaches. But what I found is this:


Using a 24v->12v dc-dc buck converter to keep miners going without a battery directly to the miner after the buck converter.

The buck converter was 50A max continuous. Before this setup I tried the chips plugged into the battery directly which fried some chips after a few voltage fluctuations.

This is why you NEED AN INVERTER to stabilize your output voltage.

When the buck converter was connected into the battery it also fluctuated with clouds and such it shut the miner off when it got too cloudy and then would turn it back on but the miner would have to reset each time and it was not efficient at all. In theory I wanted to skip the battery to save resistance and get rid of having to replace them or use them. However I have found that batteries offer a "cushion" for the voltage fluctuations to be less and yes it sucks converting dc to ac then ac to dc again but if you don't do this it's not stable voltage and will fry stuff or at best just stop functioning for bits of time unstable.


In short the losses from conversion are necessary as a trade for stability.


The only idea you could still try or I could still try is to put the buck converter into the inverter for some stability. But still it's got no power "storage" when mining goes offline from wifi failure or whatever else.