Installing a 20kW hydropower turbine--what do you think?

[hydrocoin]

Hi all, I've been lurking here for quite a while and am thinking about taking the plunge, so to speak.

We've got an old water pipeline running through our property that used to be the municipal water supply for this small town in Wyoming. It's mostly abandoned these days, so I was thinking about slapping a turbine on it. The head is about 133 feet, and it's 1 foot in diameter. I figure it could handle 3 cfs (cubic feet per second) without friction losses getting too much; I've had others check my math, and I figure it could put out about ~20 kW of usable power, perhaps as much as 25 kW, depending on the efficiency we can achieve and taking into account all losses.

It'll be pretty expensive, but it'd probably save about $1,000/month in utilities on average, as we go through buku amounts of propane in the winter. Only problem is that the utility only wants to buy back the excess electricity for like < $0.029/kWh...

Thus, I'm wracking my brain for some sort of value-added application that would make more than 3 cents/kWh of energy produced. I was thinking maybe of running some greenhouses or something like that, but of course naturally a bitcoin mining server farm also comes to mind.

So what do you think? Would it be worth it? If so, how much BTC could one expect to gain from 20 kW of energy? Since I can always get 3 cents/kWh from the utility, it'd have to make more than that to be worth it (and cover the cost of the ASIC servers of course).

One advantage is we are located in one of the coldest spots in the lower 48. I don't think the summer temperatures this year ever exceeded 80 degrees F and there's snow on the ground close to like 6 months out of the year. Just had our first frost a couple of days ago.... 

Also, we got a big workshop used to store tractors and haying equipment, so we've got plenty of space that's far enough away from the house that noise shouldn't be a problem. Would just have to get it wired up to handle that much power.

One caveat: this is going to take some time to make happen. Still got to get the water rights lined up, but that shouldn't be a problem, as it's a non-consumptive use of water that will simply go back into the creek. I can't see it happening much sooner than summer of 2016....

Also, while I consider myself to be rather computer savvy--I've done some networking and minor computer programming--but I'm definitely not a computer science or electrical engineering expert geek. But I don't know if that's really necessary.

Thanks!

[philipma1957]

depends on the install cost. and you should do it if you make a profit  with the certain 3 cents a kwatt  in power from your power company.

Once you know the deal works at 3 cents a kwatt it is no risk.
In the world of BTC from here to June is just to far away to give you any worthwhile advice other then making sure you would be good selling the power at 3 cents.

At todays prices if you had 40 antminer s-3's you would be using 15k watts maybe 16k watts.

that would earn just under 4800 usd.  but 16 x 24 x 30 =11529 kwatts a month or about 345 usd .

so if you could instantly setup  today you would earn less then 4500 the first month as the diff rises and price may not rise.

[mwizard]

There are two problems with your proposal, especially with a 2016 startup date.

1) From about mid 2015 it is likely BTC mining will only be occurring in massive mining farms where electricity costs are around the 3-5 cents.  And these mines will be run by the companies which develop the miners.  You may have trouble competing with these companies and their mining farms as they can get their miners cheap than you can with minimal capital costs.  It all depends on how much it will cost you to set up your electrical supply and miners. Assume a hash difficulty of 100,000,000,000 plus, or 4+ times the current difficulty with a quarter of current mining revenue.

2) In mid 2016 the number of bitcoins included in each mined block will half. Currently each block mined has 25 bitcoins.  It will fall to 12.5 bitcoins per block.  This will halve the total revenue earned by miners.  So assuming currently $50 million worth of bitcoin is earned per month via mining, starting in mid 2016 this will fall to $25 million per month.  This will make mining even more financially challenging.

While there may be some increase in the value of a bitcoin by 2016 it is obvious no one currently expects much of a rise.  If people were certain BTC value will rise they would be frantically buying every coin they can get.  This is not happening.

[DrG]

There are two problems with your proposal, especially with a 2016 startup date.

1) From about mid 2015 it is likely BTC mining will only be occurring in massive mining farms where electricity costs are around the 3-5 cents.  And these mines will be run by the companies which develop the miners.  You may have trouble competing with these companies and their mining farms as they can get their miners cheap than you can with minimal capital costs.  It all depends on how much it will cost you to set up your electrical supply and miners. Assume a hash difficulty of 100,000,000,000 plus, or 4+ times the current difficulty with a quarter of current mining revenue.

2) In mid 2016 the number of bitcoins included in each mined block will half. Currently each block mined has 25 bitcoins.  It will fall to 12.5 bitcoins per block.  This will halve the total revenue earned by miners.  So assuming currently $50 million worth of bitcoin is earned per month via mining, starting in mid 2016 this will fall to $25 million per month.  This will make mining even more financially challenging.

While there may be some increase in the value of a bitcoin by 2016 it is obvious no one currently expects much of a rise.  If people were certain BTC value will rise they would be frantically buying every coin they can get.  This is not happening.

I agree with this assessment.

OP if you can get the turbine built relatively cheaply you can always count it into the property value as a property upgrade so it's not wasted money.  But even with free power many people have trouble competing with ASIC manufacturers.  I have about 20KW of free power and can't really justify buying many miners.  I ended up getting a couple of S3s only because I got bored and wanted to see how they stacked up to the BFLs I bought a year ealier.

I think it would be a lot of work for minimal return (if any).  If you find it fun go for it.  When I built my custom house I ran into all kinds of headaches and prefer to avoid that kind of stuff now.

[Nagle]

By 2016, nobody will be making money entering Bitcoin mining, but people with sunk costs may still be doing it.

[Mabsark]

While there may be some increase in the value of a bitcoin by 2016 it is obvious no one currently expects much of a rise.  If people were certain BTC value will rise they would be frantically buying every coin they can get.  This is not happening.

Alternatively, that's the most likely period to see a big increase in value due to supply of new bitcoins being halved.