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Topic: Does an ASIC miner currently have a smaller repayment time than solar panels? (Read 1766 times)

legendary
Activity: 2016
Merit: 1107
The best time to do anything is long before you need it...
A solar system has alternate uses than just complementing a bitcoin mining operation.
Honestly it makes sense whether you mine or not.
If you in a place where you are getting more sunlight then investing your money for a solar panel is a good move but things you have to understand is that it is bloody expensive and with OP having a limited budget i am not sure how he will stack up by investing a large amount for the panels,but i did not fully understand what the OP is asking here,ASIC miner currently have a smaller repayment time than solar panels what does it even mean. Huh
ASIC miner is the hardware and solar panels for electricity,hope OP is not missing or confused with things here as he is asking for the cost repayment for both. Grin

this means that in many US states you can sell extra electricity generated with your solar panels
and make money,for example you sell your day extra and rebuy at nights
read philma posts for more reference he is running both ASICS and has share in solar panels business (also has some GPU farms but thats irrelevant for this topic)
but if you buy solar panels just to make money I think ROI is going to be several times worse than running ASICS
ASICS ROI are approximately 8-10 months,depending on your electricity costs and efficiency
solar panels I would expect to hit ROI in several years if not more
legendary
Activity: 1498
Merit: 1030

I have 5.6 Kw of solar on my roof.  It cost a little over $2 per watt when installed. PGE my electric utility has a sliding rate that Starts at 19 cents per KwH


 The scary part is that PGE is probably making a profit on that 19c/kwh insanely-HIGH priced electric they buy, given how crazy California power rates have gotten.

 I thought paying non-summer 7.5-8c/kwh rates in Iowa through Alliant was getting too expensive, so I moved (their summer rates for 3 months of the year was closer to 15).

legendary
Activity: 1245
Merit: 1004
The best time to do anything is long before you need it...

A solar system has alternate uses than just complementing a bitcoin mining operation.

Honestly it makes sense whether you mine or not.
It's about independance. The Guerrilla Solar Movement taken for example. Hackaday pointed at the possibilities back in 2005.
sr. member
Activity: 546
Merit: 250
kittiefight.io Combat MMO Lending Jackpots
The best time to do anything is long before you need it...
A solar system has alternate uses than just complementing a bitcoin mining operation.
Honestly it makes sense whether you mine or not.
If you in a place where you are getting more sunlight then investing your money for a solar panel is a good move but things you have to understand is that it is bloody expensive and with OP having a limited budget i am not sure how he will stack up by investing a large amount for the panels,but i did not fully understand what the OP is asking here,ASIC miner currently have a smaller repayment time than solar panels what does it even mean. Huh
ASIC miner is the hardware and solar panels for electricity,hope OP is not missing or confused with things here as he is asking for the cost repayment for both. Grin
hero member
Activity: 1792
Merit: 534
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I am looking for a small investment

Cost repayment time for both would be helpful

 Smiley
Before you can get an accurate response you need to answer some questions:

-What is your electricity cost (cents per kWh)?

-What are the solar panel subsidies in your country?

-How much electricity do you use otherwise (because the two are not mutually exclusive)?

-How much money are you willing to invest?

Solar panels can be a pretty expensive investment if you want to cover your whole electricity cost and you'll probably only manage to cover a small part if you only have a small investment.  You'll probably only save enough to get ROI with solar panels in >5 years.

Miners can be a good investment even if you only have one or two miners.  If you have low electricity costs (<8 cents per kWh) then you can expect ROI before the next halving in 2020 even if the profit from mining goes down a fair bit.  You'll probably be better going with a miner, or if you have really high electricity costs you might be better off with a combination of the two (although there would probably be much better investments to take part in if you do).
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 501
The best time to do anything is long before you need it...

A solar system has alternate uses than just complementing a bitcoin mining operation.

Honestly it makes sense whether you mine or not.
legendary
Activity: 3248
Merit: 1070
doesn't make sense to go with solar panel over other asic, one asic antminer s9 is currently mining for you a net of $226 per month and cost around $1500?

with the same $1500 you can only have 1kwh of solar panel kit, with batter and inverter, this thing would cover only 3kwh per day, which is really low if you have cheap electricity

and cheap electricity is the whole point for running an asic, regardless of everything, if you have expensive electricity, like 20 cent you are saving something like

1.4kwh(antminer s9 consumption) x 24 x 30 x 0.20, = $200/8(because the solar kit only cover 1/8 of the entire day it was already calculated..) at best $25


you used to be able to get 1/3 of your solar panel cost in the US as a tax writeoff...not sure if you still can.

Also in some locations there are stimulus packages in place to boost the price your solar is sold for...lets say that you get a 1kwh solar kit and only get 8 hours of good light.

Presumably you have batteries to capture and hold these 8kwh of light...Either at hand or through an electrical credit from your local power company.

At night you turn on your GPU's to drain your power back down...let's pretend, for the sake of simplicity that you run 1kwh of gpu's for 8 hours every night and don't use your solar system for anything else during the day.

That's approximately an R4

which currently would net around $7 a day at current prices.

So maybe your setup pays for itself the first year...maybe not. Maybe it takes two years...Maybe you resell your R4 for a loss and you're left with a solar system that will last for 10-40 years? Could be worse...you could spend that 3K on a trip to hawaii and have some memories instead of a source of passive income for however long.

Maybe tomorrow the earth melts onto a plate of spaghetti...or maybe I tell you who the original Satoshi was before the credentials were sold.

Whatever happens...make the most of it.

well too many "maybe" in your assumption, but isn't better to just the electricity, to someone which have an expensive electricity, so you can still be able to sell it at a good rate

with this you would get more than covering your miners, the only way solar panel have sense, is if you already have a arge scale operation and they already paid for themselves, basically a solar station that was bought 10 years ago...
member
Activity: 80
Merit: 11
doesn't make sense to go with solar panel over other asic, one asic antminer s9 is currently mining for you a net of $226 per month and cost around $1500?

with the same $1500 you can only have 1kwh of solar panel kit, with batter and inverter, this thing would cover only 3kwh per day, which is really low if you have cheap electricity

and cheap electricity is the whole point for running an asic, regardless of everything, if you have expensive electricity, like 20 cent you are saving something like

1.4kwh(antminer s9 consumption) x 24 x 30 x 0.20, = $200/8(because the solar kit only cover 1/8 of the entire day it was already calculated..) at best $25


you used to be able to get 1/3 of your solar panel cost in the US as a tax writeoff...not sure if you still can.

Also in some locations there are stimulus packages in place to boost the price your solar is sold for...lets say that you get a 1kwh solar kit and only get 8 hours of good light.

Presumably you have batteries to capture and hold these 8kwh of light...Either at hand or through an electrical credit from your local power company.

At night you turn on your GPU's to drain your power back down...let's pretend, for the sake of simplicity that you run 1kwh of gpu's for 8 hours every night and don't use your solar system for anything else during the day.

That's approximately an R4

which currently would net around $7 a day at current prices.

So maybe your setup pays for itself the first year...maybe not. Maybe it takes two years...Maybe you resell your R4 for a loss and you're left with a solar system that will last for 10-40 years? Could be worse...you could spend that 3K on a trip to hawaii and have some memories instead of a source of passive income for however long.

Maybe tomorrow the earth melts onto a plate of spaghetti...or maybe I tell you who the original Satoshi was before the credentials were sold.

Whatever happens...make the most of it.

I have 5.6 Kw of solar on my roof.  It cost a little over $2 per watt when installed. PGE my electric utility has a sliding rate that Starts at 19 cents per KwH and moves to over 40 cents.  For my home the solar pays for itself in about 3.5 years.

Running miners on my solar really doesn't work.  One Bitmain S9 would take my entire arrays production to run on a sunny winter day.  The summer would produce more but would end up covering the cloudy days in the winter.  Right now, an s9 makes less than 10 bucks a day.  The 25 or so KwH I generate in the winter per day if it replaces 40 cent power for my home saves me $10 per day from the utility.

If BTC keeps going up the S9 could pay for itself faster than the solar.  But for the moment with concerns of hard fork etc it's going down, and as a result with diff going up and btc going down it makes mining higher risk.  But my guess is with cheap enough power you would still pay for the S9 faster than solar panels, and if you have cheap power it greatly slows down the ROI on solar.

hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 501
doesn't make sense to go with solar panel over other asic, one asic antminer s9 is currently mining for you a net of $226 per month and cost around $1500?

with the same $1500 you can only have 1kwh of solar panel kit, with batter and inverter, this thing would cover only 3kwh per day, which is really low if you have cheap electricity

and cheap electricity is the whole point for running an asic, regardless of everything, if you have expensive electricity, like 20 cent you are saving something like

1.4kwh(antminer s9 consumption) x 24 x 30 x 0.20, = $200/8(because the solar kit only cover 1/8 of the entire day it was already calculated..) at best $25


you used to be able to get 1/3 of your solar panel cost in the US as a tax writeoff...not sure if you still can.

Also in some locations there are stimulus packages in place to boost the price your solar is sold for...lets say that you get a 1kwh solar kit and only get 8 hours of good light.

Presumably you have batteries to capture and hold these 8kwh of light...Either at hand or through an electrical credit from your local power company.

At night you turn on your GPU's to drain your power back down...let's pretend, for the sake of simplicity that you run 1kwh of gpu's for 8 hours every night and don't use your solar system for anything else during the day.

That's approximately an R4

which currently would net around $7 a day at current prices.

So maybe your setup pays for itself the first year...maybe not. Maybe it takes two years...Maybe you resell your R4 for a loss and you're left with a solar system that will last for 10-40 years? Could be worse...you could spend that 3K on a trip to hawaii and have some memories instead of a source of passive income for however long.

Maybe tomorrow the earth melts onto a plate of spaghetti...or maybe I tell you who the original Satoshi was before the credentials were sold.

Whatever happens...make the most of it.
hero member
Activity: 534
Merit: 500
I'm thinking if you are going to mine anyway and you planned on going solar anyways then it might make sense.  It especially makes sense where I live and they charge higher rates between 2pm and 7pm.  I am not sure how the solar rate plan works in that scenario though.  The 30% tax credit should buy a pretty decent miner if you spent $9,000-$10,000.  I'd love to find some info on solar ground mounting.  Unfortunately I am not a civil engineer and would like to install a DIY solar system myself.
full member
Activity: 236
Merit: 105
My understanding is that a solar panel set up (independent if using it for mining) will pay out in 5-8 years depending on where you live (sun coverage) and cost of electricity.

Miner payout is completely dependent on your electricity costs. Best case you have free power, expect a payout for sure < 1 year. There are plenty of mining calculators around to help you figure this out, try CoinWarz

5-8 years equals an eternity in comparison to bitcoin's timescale. So that answer to OP's question is: yes.
Each mining calculation that I did in my lifetime using nifty calculators ... backfired on me.
You can't predict Difficulty. That renders all numbers useless.

For sure, the mining calculators are just a thumb in the wind. Each miner has to make his / her own forecast for the difficulty, which relies on major assumptions.
legendary
Activity: 1245
Merit: 1004
My understanding is that a solar panel set up (independent if using it for mining) will pay out in 5-8 years depending on where you live (sun coverage) and cost of electricity.

Miner payout is completely dependent on your electricity costs. Best case you have free power, expect a payout for sure < 1 year. There are plenty of mining calculators around to help you figure this out, try CoinWarz

5-8 years equals an eternity in comparison to bitcoin's timescale. So that answer to OP's question is: yes.
Each mining calculation that I did in my lifetime using nifty calculators ... backfired on me.
You can't predict Difficulty. That renders all numbers useless.
full member
Activity: 236
Merit: 105
My understanding is that a solar panel set up (independent if using it for mining) will pay out in 5-8 years depending on where you live (sun coverage) and cost of electricity.

Miner payout is completely dependent on your electricity costs. Best case you have free power, expect a payout for sure < 1 year. There are plenty of mining calculators around to help you figure this out, try CoinWarz
legendary
Activity: 3248
Merit: 1070
doesn't make sense to go with solar panel over other asic, one asic antminer s9 is currently mining for you a net of $226 per month and cost around $1500?

with the same $1500 you can only have 1kwh of solar panel kit, with battery and inverter, this thing would cover only 3kwh per day, which is really low if you have cheap electricity

and cheap electricity is the whole point for running an asic, regardless of everything, if you have expensive electricity, like 20 cent you are saving something like

1.4kwh(antminer s9 consumption) x 24 x 30 x 0.20, = $200/8(because the solar kit only cover 1/8 of the entire day it was already calculated..) at best $25
legendary
Activity: 1624
Merit: 1130
Bitcoin FTW!
Depends on your electrical cost and several other factors like the ever-changing difficult and price of Bitcoin. If you enjoy stability take the solar panel route, if you're looking for some more exciting profits and you do have cheap electrical costs (<.07$/kWh) then it'll be worth mining with ASICs. GPUs might be worth looking into especially with the rise of Ethereum and all the other altcoins.
full member
Activity: 130
Merit: 100
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Cost repayment time for both would be helpful

 Smiley
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