Topic: Guide: Building a Solar Powered Mining-Plant - page 2. (Read 32424 times)

It is not down to just efficiency loss, but published Vrs real ratings... Weather... time of year.... temp of panels... age of panels

I'm saying run the numbers , it's not the gold mine  people say it is, one of the biggest mistakes is failing to understand the difference between KWh and KW

Panels are stated it W or KW. (and you will not believe the shit load of light they hit the panels with to get that rating...)

You cannot have your cake and eat it... I.E you cannot use the power for your rig AND charge the batteries.
So it is AT LEAST double....
I.E
fag paket calculation @ 100% efficiency...
100w rig would need 100wh +100wh to charge the batteries, and if it is a 5 hour charge then that would get you up-to 10 hrs of running time TOTAL. (5hrs sun +5hrs battery)
To run for 24 hrs
You would need 4*100w (20hr battery storage@5hrs)+100w to run the rig(for 5 hours), then after the sun is down you start on the battery....

I.E 500W of panels to run 24Hr @100% efficiency.  (basically a 5:1 ratio).

So 1KW would require 5KW @100% efficiency if I were to require 24hour solar.


Your 10KW is basically 420w/h and if you can get 5 hours sun...
its looking like  2.2kw/h as you said....


But now we have to start throwing in actual efficiency...  god only knows what the panels actual wattage is, but the MORE storage capacity in the battery you have, the better its operation.
I.E if you take lead acid to 'deep discharge', then the efficiency overall drops by as much as 30-40%, that is a third of the Wattage you generate just 'disappears'

http://www.localenergy.org/pdfs/Document%20Library/Lead%20Acid%20Battery%20Efficiency.pdf

Here you are expected to maintain >70% charge state on the batteries..... and just use the 'top' 30%... to get a charge efficiency of ~90% storage conversion, drop below that and your storage efficiency hits 70%

I'd really like to do some research on this, with field values of an actual setup.. but cash is a problem.

If my house had been in a slightly different place, I would be looking to use Water as there is a concrete drainage ditch nearby 1:3 slope... continuous 24hr power...

The Raspberry Pi runs off of a USB power source only.  For storage I saw a kickstarter project for a flywheel if you don't like batteries.

That should be working with just the same setup I have over here using the "minepeon". Have you tried that already?

From experience in boats and RVs I can say that it's a good idea to keep things simple.

I want to find a guide for the Raspberry Pi & 12v ASICs.

You want to keep everything 12v if you can. Converting to and from A/C induces loss and gets complicated.

The advantage of ASIC is that you can potentially keep adding them until they match what your solar panel is putting out.

I also recommend keeping the whole thing independent on it's own if possible, running either off a leisure battery or another battery setup if you have something cheap or for free.

I don't like batteries; I would much rather store energy as kinetic if possible - like water in a high place. Batteries are always going wrong and they're hard to service. Even forklift batteries get corroded on the fins inside. Sealed batteries are even worse.


Questions:

- 12v USB hub. How to add extra power without using a wallwart?
- Is there a guide for the Raspberry Pi and ASICs? I think if the Pi runs off USB it's unreliable? I've tried the Beaglebone and that's more reliable off USB, running at a lower CPU mhz (300mhz instead of 800mhz I think)
- another way to store 12v energy other than batteries which need replacing?

I have just added some new hints and pictures to the guide.

So you mean that if you need, say 10 KW a day, estimate 2 KW per hour and therefore you need at least twice that (4 KW/hour) to account for bad efficiency?

.....
If only it was 100% efficient....., you don't take into account fully charged  or empty batteries.

Also you have to watch these "criminals" and their solar power ratings for the panels., just consider that you need to at least double or triple up, to ensure that you can use the power AND charge the batteries, if you go that way.... even if you feed surplus into the grid its not the storage capacity you think it is..

I spoke to a 'friend' who has a solar panel factory.. and I was quite shocked, by the time he had finished calculating, we reckoned  on nearly 500 panels for even a small sized mining operation.....

Just run the figures for something about 500w..... over a 24 hour period..... (12 kw) based on a 4-5 hours of full sunlight ...

and these 20% conversion rates are bull*** as well (yep if you can get NASA quality then your in with a chance)

The highest wind turbines I could find ran $900 or so (plus shipping) just for the turbine itself, and only generating at a rate of 200W, .

Allegedly according to the power company we could get a HELOC to pay for a solar array and we'd make enough money to cover the payments.  I'd do it if we were sure we'd be in our home for long enough.

very nice! Actually I have a project of building a 1kW wind mill to produce my own electricity.

I found your thread very useful, thanks for sharing 

And, if you end up generating more power than you actually use, you can usually get paid for feeding the grid. You can check with your electric company, but most of them buy the excess power from you.

At 3000 KW/h per month, with a 5kw wind turbine (or or 5x 1kW turbines) you would generate nearly an excess 600KWh each month that you could sell back to the grid (assuming continuous operation of the wind turbine at full output).

Ohh, I didn't realize the meter would go backwards, lol. That's actually pretty cool!

Thanks for the info btw, .

I think you definitely want an electrician to do it for you, it might be illegal to do it yourself, and if you mess it up you'll either electrocute yourself or the power company technician if they come to work on the street power.  I'm sure they'll set everything up -- your meter will run backwards when you're selling power, so you'll pay for the net power you use.

Ahhh, I see. Thanks for this btw! It's pretty recent that I started doing research and wasn't sure where to really start.

So if we want to do a grid-tied system getting a professional involved is pretty much a necessity for the wiring and such, right?

And do you happen to know what course you'd take to sell power to a power company?

Usually you just sell the excess power to the power company and buy it back at night.  Storing it in batteries is easy when you're talking about a small electronic device, but it's expensive to scale up to a whole home.

I was under the impression that all of that was required anyways, to account from the over/underusing (so for ex. if you're generating 1 KW/hour and you happen to use 300 W one hour, you'd have 700 stored away so the next hour you could use 1.7KW and still not have issues).

Yes, but you have to buy the batteries and all the charging equipment.

Wouldn't the batteries be charged during the day though, to where at night all you're doing is burning up the saved energy, then replenishing it (while at the same time generating power for things) during the day?

I think it's really expensive to power your house from batteries at night.  Most houses get power from the grid at night.

This is extremely helpful! I'm curious, though... have you looked into wind generation as well, and would you recommend that instead?

I live in the middle of nowhere and have been somewhat looking in to going with either wind or solar for powering the entire house (I think grid-tie though in case something happens, so we have electric when it's needed but don't have to pay when we're not overusing it). At the moment we're using about 3,000 KW a month.