BitFarm on Solar with Mine/Cave and Natural water-flow radiator Cooling

[miaviator]

DIY Solar is available for under $1 per watt -
   In the northeast US solar will yield 4.2 peak hours per day
   ROI time compared to an average grid price of $.15 is: 1000wh/4.2hours*($1 per watt/.15 per kw) = 1587 Days = 4.34 years.
  This includes only Peak time, there are 6-8 hours of off peak time making this ROI time significantly faster.
   
Placing the farm in either an abandoned mine-shaft or next to a natural cavern provides free cooling which would reduce traditional power costs by 50%.  On the same token using a naturally moving water source for radiated cooling would allow for unlimited cooling.

Using BFL/ASIC/FPGA racked on four post open racks could yield a large farm with little power concern and massive scale-ability. 

Many people will state that solar/flowing water cooling are not worthwhile, and many members here have free or reduced cost power already.  I challenge any of them to produce the ability to power and cool up to 100 ACRES of miners.  Using the combination of a natural water source, an underground cavern or mine-shaft, and solar backed by grid power a long term stable and MASSIVE farm could be created.  Using the natural and free cooling (plus enhanced solar power) of say any very north eastern state we could get even more efficiency out of this system.  Everything would be contained in milvan style containers allowing the entire system to be shipped to a new location or out of the country if needed.

The only real challenge would be keeping the EPA/DNR out.  Thoughts?

[dunand]

100 ACRES of miners

Think big !

[multi#lord]

There are many other ways to do efficient cooling, though it would cost money to start up the project. A thread talked about alternate water cooling setups: faucet, geothermal, heat exchanger, etc.

This would be an interesting one, but wouldn't know how to setup: desuperheater: (need a big shovel and muscle power to go deep - even in the pond/reservoir setup)

[miaviator]

Your thinking to much infrastructure.  I grew up around lots of old gypsum, iron, etc. mines and natural caverns in bedrock.  No digging is needed to get the 60 degree bedrock air. 

Same with a natural flowing water source.  You run radiators in and cheap insulated tubing to move the water to radiated coolers for summertime.  In the winter you could stick the radiators on top of the water source in the snow/ice.

We used to run a few systems immersed in mineral oil and Florentine and used radiators in the snow for cooling.  The goal isn't super-cooling it is simply to get 50F-80F degree air to continuously flow over the heat-sinks. 

Same with solar it isn't about having a massive system with storage, rectifiers, controllers, etc.  It's about scale, setup massive homemade panels from bulk purchased cells for a very reduced cost (increased labor) tie it into the grid and use the net zero effect, sell more electric than you use to get a $0 utility bill netting free power.  When the system scales up storage capacity will be needed and as the system scales up investors/profits will allow for that.