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Topic: Best way to take advantage of cheap/free electricity? (Read 1435 times)

full member
Activity: 133
Merit: 100
free electricity or not; it's probably not worth "investing" in video cards now; at least until we're sure BFL is not going to work out. BFL is expected to hit the miners in late October/November 2012. If it in fact works like it claimed, gpu mining is not going to get anything - probably micro bit cents / day.
member
Activity: 69
Merit: 10

by saying that a computer running at your desk is something nobody would notice indicates that you are hoping to do this on the sly and not actually asking your employer's permission to do this.  without their permission, you would be stealing their electricity.

Not really what I meant, as in it wouldn't be in the way here. There are several already using other things like seti and folding. Hell, I'm mining litecoins ATM, and everyone here finds it pretty interesting.


one thing others have done is to offer to host (or host and operate) equipment for others in exchange for a portion of the proceeds.

back when people were hitting the point that they couldn't add capacity because the electrical circuits couldn't handle more or because too much heat was being generated, then colocating at another location was something that would be considered.

nowadays though anyone adding capacity is either going with fpga which consume just 10% of the electricity that mining the same amount via GPU does, or they are waiting on asic designs that are even more efficient.

so what you are offering isn't really of great value to anyone else anymore.  and in four months, the block reward will be dropping in half so even if you were to acquire gpus today they wouldn't pay for themselves anytime soon.  add in the damage should asic designs start shipping on schedule and you'll probably even regret getting involved in mining.

but there just might be some gpu mining operator  that is paying the full rate and would be willing to colocate somewhere that the electric rate is much less.  there have even been listings in craigslist looking for people whose electric is included in their lease and do a revenue share with them.

That makes sense, I haven't really been too much into mining anything other than LTC but as I'm reading more into mining BTC. I thought free/reduced cost power might be beneficial, but with lower consumption on mining hardware I guess it really doesn't matter.  Thanks for the help!
legendary
Activity: 873
Merit: 1000
Also, at my new job, I could leave one rig on all the time, for free (at least to me..) it's a IT company, so having a computer running 24x7 at my desk is par for the course. Obviously not a huge setup but a normal looking pc system could churn away without a problem.

by saying that a computer running at your desk is something nobody would notice indicates that you are hoping to do this on the sly and not actually asking your employer's permission to do this.  without their permission, you would be stealing their electricity.

I have limited funds, so I can't buy anything outright, but is there a way to lease some kind of mining rig?

one thing others have done is to offer to host (or host and operate) equipment for others in exchange for a portion of the proceeds.

back when people were hitting the point that they couldn't add capacity because the electrical circuits couldn't handle more or because too much heat was being generated, then colocating at another location was something that would be considered.

nowadays though anyone adding capacity is either going with fpga which consume just 10% of the electricity that mining the same amount via GPU does, or they are waiting on asic designs that are even more efficient.

so what you are offering isn't really of great value to anyone else anymore.  and in four months, the block reward will be dropping in half so even if you were to acquire gpus today they wouldn't pay for themselves anytime soon.  add in the damage should asic designs start shipping on schedule and you'll probably even regret getting involved in mining.

but there just might be some gpu mining operator  that is paying the full rate and would be willing to colocate somewhere that the electric rate is much less.  there have even been listings in craigslist looking for people whose electric is included in their lease and do a revenue share with them.
full member
Activity: 124
Merit: 100
I spent 1.5k on four 7070's. You want to look for video cards that have a lot of stream line processors, alu's, or shader count. Whatever you want to call it. Good luck!
member
Activity: 69
Merit: 10
So I have an interesting situation, I'm not sure if it's unique or not.  I was recently laid off from my job, and in the course of dealing with unemployment and everything that goes with it I discovered that we qualified for a 70% discount on our electric bill for at least one year (a re-certification is required annually - not sure where we will be income-wise next year).  Now, I've started a new job and all is well on that end, however I do have ~11 months with very cheap power, and would like to take advantage of it.  Also, at my new job, I could leave one rig on all the time, for free (at least to me..) it's a IT company, so having a computer running 24x7 at my desk is par for the course. Obviously not a huge setup but a normal looking pc system could churn away without a problem.

My issue is how to best take advantage of this? I have limited funds, so I can't buy anything outright, but is there a way to lease some kind of mining rig?  Something else I'm not thinking of?

I can't be the first one to think of this, so feel free to shoot me down/laugh at me.   Smiley
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