Topic: Crazydane's 32 kw solar array build feeding 16 kw worth of miners (Read 6497 times)

Here's an updated video tour of Peter aka CrazyDane's solar powered crypto mining farm!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrQ3-q2K03Q



ask and you shall receive hope you enjoy it, much better quality than the original as well

I guess he is on a 3 phase 10mm 220v, 50 x 220 = 11 kwh per phase x 3 = 33 kwh. Wind power is so much better if wind speed is greater than 30mph but the upfront cost is just mind blogging.

Status Report,,,,

It would be awesome if you could update your current solar array/mining status..

... even better would be another collaboration with video update between you and Vosk.

I think there actually is a lot more interest in this topic that people should/could benefit for their self supporting and reducing cost on mining.

Cheers,

I'm very impressed by the work you've done Dane.

I'm curious, how are your solar powered mining farm doing now?

And btw, do you have a blog elsewhere where I can follow you?

I just installed solar early this year 6.8kw self install. How are you able to go beyond 10kw? Pg&e has a 10kw limit on single phase power. Are you on 3 phase?

all of the images are broken!!

Sorry about the pics guys.  My server has been down for a bit.  I'm trying to decide if I want to host it (physical server) somewhere else, or just get a VM stood up somewhere in the cloud.  I do have all the pics.

Over the winter I'll likely add another 24 panels, bringing my total to 152, which would be capable of producing about 43 kW during the middle of the day with clear skies.

My regular cost is $0.11/kWh.  When I produce more than I consume, my meter runs "backwards" and I'm credited for the excess I produce at the exact same rate as what I pay. i.e. $0.11/kWh.  This is called Net Metering, and is something not offered everywhere, but in areas where it is available, that's definitely the way to go.  If I consistently produce more than I consume, I build up a "bank" of kWh with the POCO that I can then drain back down when my consumption exceeds my production.  My bank of kWh never expires.  Net Metering does require quite a bit of paper work up front with the POCO and they and the city/county, will need to inspect your facility before they will switch your account over to Net Metering.

Unfortunately some states are starting to pass legislation to eliminate Net Metering since some POCOs feel it is unfair that they have to credit consumers at retail rates vs. the wholesale rates they pay.

With Net Metering, there is no advantage at all to storing power generated in on-site batteries.  The grid is basically your battery, and there is no up-front cost or on-going maintenance cost to you.  I do have a large diesel generator that will run my entire operation in the case of a power outage, but at current profit levels, it cost more in fuel cost relative to the earnings, so I only run the house stuff during outages these days.

All that aside, I have shut down my S9 and L3+ ASIC rigs, but continue to run my Z9's and GPU rigs.  I'm getting ready to move some GPU rigs to the house for heat over the winter like I did last year.

I don’t understand why you need so many panels, you cant store that much power and grid buy back programs pay low rates like 1 to 2 cents per kw , so you would still have to but some from the grid , you have to check what your local utility pays and if there is a cap.

Thanks for the tips! It was interesting to look up and study all of them as I do enjoy learning new things.
But I do not have accessibility regarding space, or legal permits to run a water or wind turbine in my location due to city ruling.
The only option for me is to use solar panels for mass production of 5kwh 24/7.  Just looking to see if my math from the previous post about how many solar panels I need is right before I go out and buy the equipment.

google this:
Nikola Tesla's inventions

and
Gerard Morin

and
skeleton ultracapacitor

and
maxwell ultracapacitor

and
15kw water turbine

and
super silent wind turbine

and
solar water heating

and
modern steam engine generator

and
produce methane gas at home

and
gas generator

and
heat exchanger

+
Energy can be stored with pumping water to a pond or something!

+ your solar panels

+ your batteries

Right combination will surly give a 24/7 solution !

How much energy do you need

Yeah true. So from my understanding if I wanted 10kwh I would need 33.3 (can't have a third of a solar panel) so 34 panels each doing 300w to pull in 10200w every hour.
I see 10-12 hours of sunlight but guessing I only have 5-7 hours of peak sunlight to draw in that much electric power, so I'm going to go with 5 hours just to be on the low side and make sure I get enough panels. Which would mean with 34 panels 300w each for 5 hours I can produce 10200w per hour and 51000w in 5 hours which would be per day. But I am looking for run my entire farm on solar 24h every single day, so from my understanding I would need 120000w per day, using 5000w every hour for 24h. So I would need 80 panels each doing 300w which would produce 24000w every hour, for 5 hours which would come out to 120000w per day. With 80 panels producing 120000w per day I should be able to run my 5000w farm for 24h a day? Or do y'all think I would need the 111 panels which this calculator suggests that I would need? https://www.renogy.com/calculators/#tab_size-ongrid

My question to anybody out there that has a solar system or has the knowledge.  Is my math correct, would I only need 80 panels each producing 300w or would I need 111 panels like the calculator suggests to produce the 120kwh I would need to run my 5kwh farm for 24h a day. Or would I only need the 34 panels to produce 10.2kwh to run my 5kwh farm for 24h a day? 
Also do y'all know of some better panels that can produce more watts therefore I would need to put up less panels and use less space? Currently looking at the Renogy 300w panels.

+1

all the pics unavailable and they were an awesome reference

The pictures

is it possible to upload somewhere else ?

111 300 watt panels is way more power than 27 gpus will use, in the day at least lol, thats like a 30kw power system.

a 10kwh system is like 20 to 30 panels , thats more in your power range

Would love to see an update on your farm and how things are going!
For some reason the pictures on the original first post aren't showing.  But I appreciate you letting out all of this information and how you set everything up.

I do have some questions as I am looking to bring my farm onto a solar system.
Currently running 27 1080's and 8 1070's pulling roughly 4800kwh depending on the algorithm to be safe lets just say 5000w.  I live in Texas where we get lots of sunlight throughout the days. While running the farm for 24h on 240v pulling 5000kwh, how big of a solar system do I need? I've found a solar calculator here: https://www.renogy.com/calculators/#tab_size-ongrid that says I would need at least a 33.3k solar system which would come out to 111 - 300w solar panels. Is this calculator right? Or would I only need a 5000w solar system since that is all the power I am wanting to consume?
I also am debating between on-grid and off-grid systems. I only really need the system for the mining farm and not focused on providing electricity for the house though if possible it would be nice, the house is using between 1000-2000kwh. What are the benefits of both on-grid and off-grid for a mining farm?
I have the power lines running into the house breaker box then wire running into the garage where I have another breaker box with multiple 120v plugs and one 240v plug. Where would you set up the solar system? Directly to the 240v mining plugs or into the garage breaker box? Where does the solar system plug into? Also say your solar system doesn't provide enough power that day, how would you go about swapping between solar and using the electricity companies energy to insure the farm stays up and running 24/7?
Lastly is there certain panels or a company you can suggest?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope to hear back from you!
- Badoggy.

@crayzdane

 
hey im in the process  of specing out a 100 panel 300 watt solar array and also installing
the panels myself, I am debating on doing it using microinverters for each panel to supply full ac power rather than dc and then connect that to my sub panel.  

any thoughts on this ? I got a qoute from alibaba for 100 290 watt mono panels with mounting stuff and the micorinverts already drilled and connected to the solar panel mounts underside for $10k or so( that
exculdes the ac connectors since i have to send measurements of my garage roof first) any

i am in the us so i suppose I can basically do most of my stuff like yours, only issue is i live in the city and i need permits and stuff.  I like the idea of having a separate sub panel for the solar but i have huge panels and alot of room in them so probably no need?

one question I have is why 20 amp instead of 30 amp  breakers to fees into your main panels

I have three 200 amp panels myself but my goal is no have everthing run off the solar array if it can so
how can I connect all the panels to the mains instead of direct to brreakers?  That way I dont have to pick and choose what gear runs off solar attached brrakers or am I totally wrong in my thinking?

basically all i want is during the day my pannels power as much as my eqipment as they can basically max load from solar load balanced with grid power if the solar ia insufficient, as solar powet wanes more load it covered by the grid.  All this is independant of what outlets i am using

thoughts ?

Awesome setup! Really cool to have the ability to drill down to see individual panel power generation and power usage of components.

How efficient are the panels?

Anything you'd change if you had to do it all over again but with the knowledge from this project?

I was all ready to compliment you on your wiring until i saw the last picture 

So what is ROI now?

incredible!! will you mind share some cost details? I am selling my condo in bay area and expecting to receive hefty sum and looking around to offset the grid cost and carbon footprint with something like this. I currently rented a warehouse in nevada where electricity cheap but it is still not cost effective at today's rate. Thanks!

great setup and a great writeup, i wonder how much the panels lose of their efficiency/production in low light/cloudy conditions.

bookmarking

I have been looking into using old Gen 7 Xeons for mining and possibly also for HDD mining stuff.

This is really great to see Dane, I watched your videos on Voskcoin and showed my mum who is really into green technology and she was pretty impressed by it. She liked your 'wife approval factor' - something we don't have in our house, so much!

Are you also mining Storj? Do you mine Burst simply due to the profit or do you see the potential of the coin ?

Thanks for sharing that CrazyDane  That's very impressive!  Just out of curiosity, how do you control such a large array of disks with one motherboard?  There are usually 6 stata ports on a motherboard and a few USB headers.   Do you buy PCI-E controller cards which can control dozens of drives?  If so, which one to get?

Also, if you don't mind, who has the best prices on like twenty 200-250w or so solar panels?  Is there a particular brand/model you recommend?  I was thinking about putting them on the roof of my home.  Only thing I am concerned about htough is it is a brand new roof with architectural shingles.. don't want to damage it with tons of holes. . Is it easy to properly install so many solar panels without there being any leaks?

I have 4 x 24 bay chassis used by a single server (housed in one of those 4 chassis).  I have a total of 90 drives ranging from 2TB to 8TB.  Total storage just shy of 300TB.  I have a Supermicro motherboard with a E5-2683 v3 (14 core CPU).  It is capable of scanning the entire 300TB worth of plots in 30 seconds.  Plotting the drives initially is very time consuming, but once done, other than a burst of i/o every 4 minutes or so, there is not much stress on the machine.  So I don't see why you could not also GPU mine on the same rig.  My 2683 is actually mining XMR at the same time as Burst.  With the new PoC consortium and the recently released white paper on PoC2 and PoC3, I think Burst has a bright future.

If you wouldn't mind answering my question about your Burstcoin array.  Very interested in it.  (Posted the question above)

I keep wondering: If you have that much money to spare -obviously you are doing pretty damn well- wouldn't it be better to buy altcoins now and sell them later for profit?

Too funny, I stumbled on this thread and thought That is my kind of Crazy and then I read you moniker! Lol

Great job, I can see your not afraid to roll your sleeves up and your pre-planning skills are superlative.

You cheated though, your supposed to lug all those panels up the ladder!

Wow insane!  That is awesome.

Sure!  Maybe once I get all my miners situated in/near my shop this spring, would be a good time for a follow up.

Thanks Phil!


What are your thoughts on going with a bunch of smaller fans vs. fewer larger ones.  Larger ones are much more efficient when you look at CFM per watt.   The Master Flow 1600 CFM pulls just under 200 watt, so that works out to 8 CFM per watt.  The large 36" fans I was looking at do 10,000 CFM @ 800 watt, so that is 12.5 CFM per watt.

But having more smaller fans allows for better redundancy and air flow can be adjusted by turning some of them off when not needed.  Cutting round hole in metal is a bitch though.


That is a great idea!   The container comes on a roll away 5th wheel trailer, so it will be tricky to get the container up on that base since the driver won't be able to drive up on it to do the unloading, at least not without a lot of temporary support.  They do offer "precision delivery", but that almost doubles the cost since they have to bring out a big crane.  I'll have to check with them on what options I have.  With my equipment I might be able get it up on there myself.  I think a 40ft is around 8,000 lbs.  I mean, I can do this:



So I can probably position the container on the foundation somehow.  Should be fun. 


Another great idea.  I figured I can do mesh skirt all around the container to keep out animals and other large dirt object.  Sort of like a pre-screen for the pleated filters in the floor.


That or have the inside spray foamed.


That link did not come through.  But basically create a slope in the ceiling towards the exhaust fans, right?

Thanks was an honor my audio was a total bust but gives me an excuse to bug crazydane for an updated one!

Thanks to everyone else also for the kind comments + the video was received incredibly well on youtube which was so cool to see!

me as well, this is the very thing I want to set up  but since I live in the city, plots of land just are not big enough to house enough solar panels to make it worth while lol. but danm seeing this is quite wonderful. me personally id add in residential wind turbines to produce power during night time and possibly looking into a battery backup setup so as to store some of the energy produced during the day so one isn't drawing power from the grid at night. just seems a little counter productive to make tons of power during the day with no way to store it only to draw 100% during night hours

Watching your setup is giving me a serious case of solar envy.
Thanks for sharing, it is truly inspirational!

Just watched your interview with Vosk.  Solar panel arrays is something I was thinking about doing to my home way back in 2014.  If I would of done it then, most of it would of almost paid itself off by now . Such a great investment.  Guaranteed ROI unlike a mining rig.  I am concerned though with Trump's recent threats to China with respect to tarrifs of solar panels.. seems like he is in big with coal , natural gas & petrol industry no?  Why does he despise green energy sigh.. and the science behind global warming.

Btw, I noticed in the interview you had this very large Burstcoin array.. several sets of like 24 HDD .. you have how many HDD runnign now?  How many motherboards drive those arrays?  I was thinking about getting into burstcoin because it's green and well it makes sense.  I am surprised there aren't more proof of capacity coins.  Do you think proof of capacity will eventually really take off?  I am thinking about adding 5 x SATA HDD to my GPU mining rig, would this be a bad idea?  like 5 x 8 TB HDD.  Would it slow down the GPU mining?

The rural county that I live in started offering fiber based internet service about 3 years ago to help develop and attract businesses.  I got together with my homeowners association (16 of us, each with decent sized lots ranging from 6 to 200 acres) and worked out a deal with the county to bring in fiber.  Cost of construction was about $50,000 which the county subsidized so the cost to the homeowners was only 50% of that, and they let us pay it back over 5 years at 0% interest.  All but one homeowner signed up, and we closed on the deal.

That was 2.5 years ago and we now all have nice fast fiber based internet service.  I actually have 2 ONT's (Optical Network Terminators, or fiber modems), at my local, each on different sub nets, for some redundancy.  I'm still working with the county to get them to offer symmetrical GigE service.  The equipment is capable of handling it, but they just don't offer residential rates at that speed.  So I currently have dual 50 mbps down / 10 mbps up for an aggregate of 100/20 service.

The rest of my network equipment is all Ubiquiti Unifi, which is the same company that sells the solar equipment that I use.  So I have a central dashboard from which I can manage router, switches, and access points.  Here's the main dashboard:



A view of the network devices on the network:



The AP down at my shop is currently disconnected as I ran out of ports on the switch, so the above view, as well as the main dashboard, provides an indicator that something is wrong.

Here's a topology view.  Sorry that is is all squished together horizontally.



Here's the actual core network equipment:



24 port path panel on top for hardwired ethernet jacks through the house.

48 port core 1Gbps switch with 500W PoE (powers ip phones, access points, security cameras, etc).

16 port 10Gbps switch for server connections and fiber down links to other switches.

Dual WAN/LAN router/gateway.

2x ONT modems to the service provider.

Id like to get a hold of you regarding your projects.  You have done many things I am trying to emulate and some advice would be fantastic if you're willing.

Hi Dane, also saw your video on Vosk's channel and very impressed.

I know you addressed building bank with your power company, and I have a similar arrangement (but much smaller one) using Solar City that came with the house when I purchased it -- but I have been recently interested in the idea of building a powerwall.

As stated, batteries are quite expensive - to run 15 cards drawing 200w each, I would need 10,000 cells, and you are lucky to get those at a dollar a cell plus panels to charge them.

Would you ever consider this ? Sounds like you have a fine plan as it is, but if the grid goes down (which it rarely does) you have only that generator. Thoughts?

On topic!

Dane,  I will not refer to you as CrazyDane since you are obviously sharper than most walking around stealing oxygen...
Great job you inspire me to get wife approved [roject done....

What an awesome project!

Great video Vosk! Always enjoy seeing the community come together!

Hi. this is a little off subject. But i was wondering what kind of internet service you have, since it seems that your living in a remote area? fiber optic cable, satellite, phone service?

Great job guys. Good video - thanks for sharing Dane.

Awesome video vosk! Like your work on this, plus on building mining rigs and talking about zencash and other topics. Keep the videos coming!

Great video VoskCoin was nice to see how the solar setup complemented his pretty extensive mining rigs. That what you call a nice hobby set up

Hi,

I watched your video on the VoskCoin Youtube channel. Really impressive stuff. Wishing u all the best. 


Cheers.

Don't know if you'd be too keen on telling everyone here, but would you be able to give me a rough estimate on the ROI that you're expecting here? Maybe even with an amount of money that you're pulling down on a weekly basis on pure profit?


I don't think you included it in your post, if you did I am sorry! -- Trying to see if mining is for me as I do have access to a good amount of free power.

It arrived do you want it?  At oem  not rip off price.  if you do shoot me a pm.

You got me into water blocks this style is a little too hard for me.

I do have a lot of msu sea hawk with corsair coolers factory prebuilt
and a lot of evga hybrid's

but old school wb's  are not for me.

Thanks for putting the video together Vosk!  It was a lot of fun.

@ x299  My system is grid tied.  So I draw power from it at night and anytime during the day when I consume more than I use.  On sunny days, I push quite a bit back onto the grid, despite what my miners consume.

The solar gateways allow me to track the production from each array.  Here's a snapshot from around noon on the 15th:

Roof array:



24 panel ground array:



48 panel ground array:



So how much sun there is on a given day has, as you would expect, a huge impact on the power being produced.

Also, I still got a couple of inverters to test on the 48 panel array as only 43 of 48 are reporting as seen above.

And from all these solar panels you use 12 hours / day, at night what do you do?

 

this is an amazing work....

congrats mate...

no words...................

I had the awesome opportunity and truly pleasure to tour CrazyDane's mining farm and have him talk about his setup -- for those interested check it out here!




https://youtu.be/V2fhHdeN_5E

ah so cool to see working on the video as I type this!

To be fair the tallest mountain in the appalachians is Mount Mitchell at nearly 6700 feet. Still not that tall but it not some little hill lol.

I'm from Denmark originally, but reside in the U.S. in central Virginia these days.  Those are the Blue Ridge Mountains you can see in some of the pics.  We don't have mountains like that in Denmark.  The tallest "mountain" if you can even call it that, is 561 feet.  

Holy shit im impressed man! Where in the world is this? Could one make reference to your nickname here on the forum? Denmark? If it is, you are one great neighbour! With the solar hours in the north i have my doubts but you prolly have done ur homework.

Yes, they are topped off about twice a year.  Interesting idea about building a blast/fire wall.  Will definitely look into that if I don't end up just removing them.

Reason I might just get rid of them is that I plan to move all my mining rigs down to the shop come spring, and plan build a dedicated mining room within the shop that will have hot and cold isles and vent to the outside.  The inlet will be very close to where those propane tanks are.  While some rigs will go back up to the house next winter, enough will stay behind to keep the shop building frost fee.


Damn those are expensive right now!

I like micro-inverters because they allow me to track individual panel performance.  Also, if a panel is shaded for part of the day, it won't drag the rest of the string it is part of down.

But yes, cost is higher, but you avoid dealing with high voltage DC and the now mandatory rapid shutdown those requires, making the cost closer to equal.

See the two lp tanks  I assume they are filled time to time.

Can  you build a  blast/fire wall?

cheap and easy..

2 fiberglass blanket

https://www.amazon.com/Tonyko%C2%AE-Fiberglass-Fire-Blanket-39-inch/dp/B01N1F737R/ref=sr_1_3?

the large 78 inch size wraps around  these three pieces  cost 50 for 2

https://www.homedepot.com/p/James-Hardie-HardieBacker-3-ft-x-5-ft-x-0-42-in-Cement-Backerboard-220023/100170507

backerboard shields blast-fire  cost 2 for 27

https://www.ebay.com/itm/STAINLESS-STEEL-SHEET-035-x-36-x-48-304-2B/311385729636?
prevents backboard from shattering cost 50

so  blanket - backerboard - stainless steel - backerboard - blanket

 about 1 inch thick about 130 to build.

and it would direct blast-fire of tanks away from the building. Seems  dumb I know  but I have a cousin in firefighting and he has seen 2 or 3 of those tanks ignite .  He said 1 home had almost no damage  due to the  blast/firewall I just described.



I am getting a replacement  msi 1070 water block today.  last card leaked


https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GeForce-1070-HAWK-GTX_1070_SEA_HAWK_EK_X/dp/B01HBG0VY0/ref=sr_1_5?


msi was under 15 days on replacement.

By the way  solar is very nice it has been very good to buysolar and I.

Why mini inverter, and not a big one? Should be cheaper

wow big money

this thread should be a sticky

Ah that makes more sense I wasn't aware of a smaller version personally I haven't seen them this way as pretty much everyone just sticks with solar but its a great idea as it would generate a good amount of power in winter while the solar is hardly getting used. I definitely need it to suit 3 phase power due to the draw I am getting from the pool, air conditioning etc.

Thanks for this amazing post. Great work Crazydane! It looks like a really fun and rewarding project.

I really would love to try something like this on a smaller scale for a personal project, and I have some ideas about doing something like this for a community project as well.

haha lol not the ones your thinking of, not those HUGE ones that you see along the road, theres  really good residential ones now that are small and nice looking, couple that I looked at did 3 phase AC, small enough for a property like yours you could have multiple which would give you some power generation at night

For the 2 most recently installed ground mount arrays, I ordered the panels and mounting hardware from Renvu the last time they ran a special with free shipping.

The micro-inverters, solar panels, end run connectors, and associated cabling and such, I ordered from Streakwave.

Rough ball park on cost:

$200 280W Solar Panel
$100 250W Micro Inverter
$50 Solar Gateway
$20 End Run connectors
$20 Y-Cable

So to build a 24 panel array, you would need:

24 panels
24 inverters
24 Y-cables
1 Solar gateway
2 End Run connectors

So about $ 7,770 for a 6.72 kW array.  To this you have to add the cost of ground or roof mounting, plus conduit, wiring and breakers, to tie into your existing system.  Doing everything myself, I've been able to keep the cost down to about $1.25 - $1.50 per watt.  Most solar companies offering turn-key solutions charge between $3 and $5 per watt.

Do you not have a net metering arrangement with your power company?  I'm basically using the grid as my battery.  Any excess energy I used during the day is pushed into the grid, and I'm credited the exact kWh I push in, and I then pull those back out at night, plus whatever additional kWh I need.  If I push in more than I use over time, I build up a "bank" of kWh with the POCO.  Before I started mining, I had build up a bank of well over 1,000 kWh.

Miners are up and running already.  Please see my updates in the 4th post.

I definitely don't have enough space for turbines. I don't know if you know much about POWR ledger? It's a great blockchain project it would really benefit someone like me if introduced to my area as I could basically "sell" my surplus solar for credits that I could then maybe use at night when I am not generating anything.

which site did you order the panels and micro inverters and everything else needed? I'm curious

Nice work. 

With 16kw of miners your solar panel investment should pay off pretty quickly.

Looking forward to more updates. 

have you thought about adding other forms of renewable energy? like wind turbines? there some really good ones these days, also what about power storage all the extra panels only do soo much good, you produce enough that energy storage should be something you might wanna look at, ive been looking to do solar and wind myself but am limited by the size of my property. Washington state has some great solar incentives like getting paid more if you get certain things that are made in the state like the solar panels and inverter

Where I am unfortunately we only have 1 energy provider and they basically have a monopoly on the service.

We get paid 0.07 cents a KW for unused surplus energy that goes back in the grid but that's all.

"Perth may be one of the most isolated cities on the planet (it’s closer to Singapore than Sydney, and closer to Jakarta than Australia’s capital, Canberra), but it’s also one of the sunniest. In fact, it’s officially the sunniest capital city in the world, with an average of eight hours of sun per day, year-round. "

Unfortunately that means the energy provider likes to keep profits up and with the plunging price of solar electricity there is little incentive offered

If you are generating an excess amount of energy because of extra solar panels, with a net metering setup with your local electricity provider, you could use the excess electricity generated in the morning at night. Usually tho they buy your electricity at a reduced price from what they sell it at but if you have a large solar array then you should also be able to offset electricity expenses at night time.

Yeah this has always interested me. I sometimes 'feel bad' about pulling electricity for mining, which is mainly coming from non-renewable sources (although where I live the council/government is trying to increase its amount of renewable energy).

Having a clean mining operation is great, because you get all the benefits of mining, without the added electricity consumption pumping out fossil fuels and adding to your quarterly running bill.

Good project Dane! I have done similar with 21.6kW panels / 5kW miners. Very fun and satisfying synergy.

Very nice. I'm in Western Australia so we get sun for most of the year. I max out my inverter during the day but of course get no use out if it at night.

Will get great when battery storage comes down in price in a few years.

That's awesome - I've seen a lot of people on reddit talk about the feasibility of doing a solar mining operation. Looks like a great project - I'll follow.

I think you could do a blog on a place like steemit and probably get a few people interested. It's a bit hit and miss over there sometimes in terms of what gets popular but you could make a few bucks if the right people read about your project, plus you've already done the work by posting about it here.

Do you already have the miners all set up, or will you get them (or more) once the solar system is all up and running?

Wow, thats a lot of work. Your area looks very similar to mine in the Appalachians.

Very nice.

I have a couple of different methods to monitor my energy production and consumption.  Each array cluster has what is known as a solar gateway that collects data from all the micro-inverters to provide stats on how my energy each panel produces in real-time.  Each micro-inverter is equipped with a low power Blu-tooth transmitter to communicate with the solar gateway.  The solar gateway has an Ethernet connection to my LAN.

Here's a view of the initial 24 panel ground mount array, showing the power being generated by the individual panels:



So drilling down to this level of detail is great for trouble shooting performance issues with individual panels and/or inverters.

For my location and with my current setup with 128 panels rated at between 260W and 290W, my monthly production should be something like this:



Here's a look at my actual power usage and cost over the last several years:



My first array came online in December 2016, and you can see from the above chart that by March, 2017, I had reached a point where I was producing more power than I used.  So the only thing I had to pay for was the monthly service charge of $31.73.

Then in July 2017, I started mining and it quickly got to the point where my miners were sucking down way more power than I was able to produce.

I recently installed a system that allows me to track both usage and production.  Here's a look at the summary dashboard from this application:



From here I can drill down into various graphs to look at individual stats.

Here's a view of my solar power graph from yesterday:



Some clouds rolled in during the afternoon as you can see from the drop in power levels starting around 2pm.

Here's another view showing my actual kWh production yesterday:



So just under 120 kWh.

Here's a view of all my power consumption yesterday:



So a little under 15 kW plus whatever household appliances happens to be running.

A view of the net power consumption yesterday with the power produced from the solar arrays subtracted:



Since I have a current transformer connected to each circuits that carries miner related loads, I'm able to track consumption down to that level.

Here's a view of the miner dashboard I created.  It shows daily power, in kWh, consumed by each rig (or rigs connected to a given breaker circuits), and well as the power level usage throughout the day:



In order to track power at the circuit level, I had to install energy monitors at each breaker panel.  Here are the monitors installed at the 2 main panels:



I have similar energy monitors installed at the network/server sub-panel, as well as the shop sub-panel where the solar panels are located.

The original shop roof mount array and the ground mount array installed at the same time, provided an 80 panel system capable of producing 20 kW.  For my latitude, that works out to around 2,200 kWh month averaged out over a year.

This was more than enough to cover all my energy needs, which was pretty high to begin with.  But once I started mining mid summer last year, I quickly found my consumption outstripped my production, so I decided to add another 48 panels via a pair of 24 panel arrays.

The panels have arrived.  These are rated at 280w where the previous ones were 260W.  Not a huge difference, but I'm curious how many kWh they will produce in the real world compared to the older panels.



I got the tube framing in place and the rails on the 1st array:



And about 50% done mounting panels:



All done:



For the power back feed, I decided to get a single exterior rated 200A panel, and consolidate all 128 panels to this one location.  I tapped the 400A shop sub-panel meter base as follows.  Note that ground and neutral are kept separate since this is a sub-panel off the main service entrance at the house:



And the 200A tap runs to the right towards the 200A solar sub-panel:



And here's where the 3/0 Cu cable terminate in the solar sub-panel.  The pic was taken before the ground wire was run.

And shot of the dedicated solar sub-panel with the roof and initial ground mount strings being connected to the grid:

The 24 panel ground array consist of panels identical to what is on the roof array.  Being that the array was located on recent back-fill, I decided to play it safe and do a full footer pour.



With the core frame in place, it was time to add the aluminum rails the panel were to rest on:



Panels all in place:



Backside showing the micro inverters at each panel"



You can see this is just before the end-run connectors were wired in.

This 24 panel ground array was broken into 2 12 panel strings, with each string returning to a 240V 20A breaker.

I figured I'd start a thread detailing my 3 stage (so far) built out to what is currently a 128 panel, 32 kw solar array to assist with offloading the cost of my mining operation.

It all started during the summer of 2016, before I got into mining.  I just wanted to generate my own power, but still be connected to the grid via an arrangement known as net metering.  In a nutshell, that means that when I generate more power than I use, my meter runs backwards, and I'm credited at the same rate I'm billed, for any power I put back into the grid.

I have 2 buildings on my property, the main dwelling with a 400A service, and my shop building with a separate 400A service.  When I inquired about going solar and wanting to connect all the panels to the shop building, I was told that was a no no since the shop building used very little power on an annual basis compared to the main dwelling.  So I had to disconnect the service at the shop, and instead, have the house be the single service entrance, which would then have to feed the shop and have the solar farm connected to it.

So in order to accomplish that, I had to first have the power to the shop building terminated.  POCO come out and drop the lines feeding the service to the shop:



I then dug up the 500 MCM Al cables between the pole and the shop, and dug a new trench from the house to the shop, to drop them back into:



What a mess that was...  500 MCM cable is pretty damn stout, btw:



So in order to meet code, I had to get a 400A safety disconnect and since I wanted to have a whole house backup generator, a 400A transfer switch.  The POCO was kind enough to drop off a new 320A meter base (transient rating is 400A), so that I could do all my prep work prior to the cut over.  So here are all 3 pieces prior to installation:



Here's the new meter base and safety disconnect mounted with the existing service just "flapping in the air":



Called the POCO back out, and it took me about 45 minutes from when the cut the power at the pole, to pull the old meter base and replace it with the 400A transfer switch and get everything wired to the point they could restore power:



After the "ground work" inspection, I was then able to back fill the trenches and seed:



So now I could finally prep for installing the first solar array, which consisted of 56 panels mounted on my shop building roof.

Here are the panels and assorted hardware:





I started by installing all the mounting brackets on the roof and then the bottom skirts:



After a few days, I was about half way there (I'm doing all this solo, btw):



6 days later I was down to the last panel:





Now it was time to do the electrical work.  The 56 panels on the roof consists of 4 strings with 14 panel in each.  I use micro inverters that are rated for 250W, so each string can generate up to 3,500 watts @ 240V.  Here's what each panel looks like before mounting on the roof:



So the DC voltage from the panel if fed into the inverter, which in turn puts out 240A AC which is then connected in series with the other panels in each string:

At the end of each string, there is what is know as an "end-run connector".  It simply terminates the AC voltage to 10 gauge wire, which is feed down to a 20A breaker:



All 4 end run connectors are then combined into a single run down into the breaker panel:



And here are the 4 solar panel strings terminated into 20A breakers in the sub-panel: