Topic: Hello, my friend has 200 solar panels, do they generate enough energy for mining (Read 403 times)

As Stalker22 said, if OP, (who hasn't visited the topic since) found the simple explanation too complicated do you think this will help?
He had problems with raw kwh translated metrics, what's the point of talking about joules and volt-amp, like seriously?

Anyhow, I guess we can't help OP anymore no matter how we try to dissect this and it will turn basically into a discussion between us, he maybe has got wind of a business from somewhere else and he just enquired without knowing the details or something else, but he has o real plan on it, nor does he know too much about mining either. So, I don't want to be a pessimist and like bury other's dreams so roughly but if you don't know what you're doing better stop doign it, especially if it costs money!


Yeah but again it's average per year, so depending where you're situated you can have even 30% variance summer winter, and if you're running only on solar that would be a tremendous increase in batteries, if you use those solar panels for heating again, what's spare energy in summer bight be not enough for an s9 in winter...and so on!
We're just talking assumptions here without OP helping us!

We are not talking about batteries here. No need to complicate things.

OP asked about solar panels and how much power they can generate for mining.  And, philipma1957 has already explained the most cost-effective option:

I guess it will  because Machine requires alot of power supply to work perfectly  you see solar panels are rated for their wattage - how much power they can produce. 200 amp-hours is a measure of battery storage - how much energy can be stored at some associated battery voltage. So you have to provide some additional information to find a useful answer. Power is the RATE of energy transfer (1 Watt = 1 Joule/second). But we do NOT want to start talking about Joules. So another way to talk about it is this (1 Watt = 1 Volt-Amp; harder to see the rate aspect of that until you consider that amperage is a measure of electric current per time).

As an example, if your battery has 12V capacity, then 200 amp-hours means 200x12 = 2400 watt-hours. Say you have a 100 watt solar panel? It can “fill” the battery in 2400 watt-hours / 100 watts = 24 hours (not a 24 hour period of course - no sun at night - but in about four average sunny days with 6 good hours of sun on fixed panels). If you want to fill the battery in one day, you need about four times the panel watttage. A tracker mechanism can increase the effective output of the panels somewhat and a cloudy day can reduce it somewhat.

The batteries do not recharge 100 % efficiently - you can read about Peukert’s exponent for more information on that. Between the solar panels and the battery, there is usually a “charge controller” which is also not 100% efficient. While the batteries are charging, they may also be providing power to daytime uses. For all these reasons, the panels need to be bigger than just calculated for battery-charging. Hope that helps.

which basically in the 4 to 6 range I mentioned earlier

1kwatt panel does 4kw to 6kw a day
400watt panel does 1.6kw to 2.4kwatt a day.

the s19s range at 66 to 80 kwatts a day around thirty to 42 400 watt panels

and I am talking grid tied with a fair 1 to 1 deal from power company
the s21s range at 86 to 90kwatts a day around forty to fifty 400 watt panels

If your solar plant produces only 20% of its max rated power capacity throughout the year, it basically boils down to 24h*0.2=4.8 (your power factor), in order to calculate a rough estimate of the average daily production.

So, your 1 kW solar panels will produce about 4.8 kW per day on average.

Ok, thanks for the info.

And where does the 4.8 comes from?


Yeah, I know that site. And also there are tons of applications to dimension a solar park and other solutions. I'm actually starting to work with one I got a license for!

You do not need to understand it at first.

Read through the replies again slowly, you'll get it. It is not as difficult as you think.

Let me break it down the best I understand.

You didn't give the specifics of the 200 solar panels you said you friend. What the replies are saying in summary is that it is possible that the 200 solar panels can generate enough energy for mining however, it depends on the following factors, the specs of those 200 solar panels (wattage, efficiency, etc.), your geographical  location and amount of daily sunlight exposure, energy requirements of your particular mining rig or setup. That is, if the mining energy needs match up appropriately.

Revert to your friend and let us know if this was helpful.

There are professionals who specialize in fixing solar panels, if you do not understand the power requirements, you can contract the service of one close to you so they do the calculations for you.

There is a method for them to calculate the power requirement of all the equipment you want to use on the solar, and then they add some more space for any other little thing that you may need the solar to power. They do the calculation, and tell you the number of panels you will need as well as the number of batteries you will require.

The idea that your friend can start Bitcoin mining only if he has 200 solar panels may be wrong because the size of the solar panels that your friend has 200 solar panels or how your friend will install his solar panels are also very important. If the size of the 200 solar panel is large and if your friend chooses a place to install the solar panel that has long exposure to sunlight and less chance of bad weather, if these things your friend can do properly then maybe use 200 panel. Initially it is possible to start Bitcoin mining.

Go here, find your location,
https://globalsolaratlas.info/map
and you have the normal average output for a system in terms of kwh generated for 1 kw of capacity.


Then, well , maybe it's better not to venture in something you don't understand head first, especially since mining is not really a cheap business to start?

I would start by asking your friend how much electricity he produces each day and how much he has to spare, 400 panels is a lot for the average house but without giving us any kind of information, capacity, location, actual consumption, if a grid connection is also available,  you could run 4 miners as Phil said or maybe you don't have the spare for even one..
You will not get an answer to build your plan on if your question leaves out any much needed info!

Too much details in the comments but the most important thing and probably the only thing that really matters would be your buy back prices.

It does not matter if you have 2 or 2000 panels, you can't mine Bitcoin off-grid, so you will always have to buy power from the grid, so how much would your electric provider pay you for it and how much they would sell it back for?

If electricity is too complicated for you, think of it as extracting water from your land, you have a pump that only works for 4-5 hours a day, doesn't matter how much water you get, you can't store any of it to use it for the remaining 19-20 hours, so you extract more than you use, sell it to the water company, and then buy it back when your pump is not working.

No, power factor is not exactly about the number of hours you get max power from a panel. It is much more than that, and other parameters are also taken into account, such as the total number of sunny days in a year and things like that.  The power factor is based on the capacity utilization factor (C.U.F.). That is the ratio between the actual measurable power output from a solar plant over a year, divided by the maximum possible output in perfect conditions.  

They calculate it like:

Capacity Utilization Factor(C.U.F) = (Actual energy from the plant(kwh)) / (Plant Capacity (kwp) x 24 x 365)



(Global capacity factors of solar generation)

Lets say your solar plant's location has a 0.2 capacity factor.  That means it will make about 20% of its max rated power capacity throughout the year.  From this, we can easily calculate that its power factor is 4.8, which we can use to estimate roughly how much power it will produce daily on average.

yes sunrise almost 10% noon 100% sunset almost 10%

most places in the world rate 4 to 6 hours.

Ireland sucks             maybe 4 hours

 Saudi Arabia great.  maybe 6 hours

I've got my Rigs running on Timers running on/off automatically depending on the usual most active Solar Hours. ( Aka mine for free during the day)

It's impossible to answer your question without knowing how much Electricity you're consuming yourself!

200 panels is a big number, but it means nothing if you've got a lot of Asics & Hardware that will be consuming more than what you're producing!

1. Ask your friend (or look below the Panels if they are mounted/check inverter UI) how much each Panel is providing?

2. Panels will only produce as much as You're consuming + Battery Charging/inverter limit. ( If your panels can produce 30Amps, but your house is using 10Amps, and the battery is charging for another 10amps, those extra 10 amps will not be given to you by the Panels unless you are actively consuming Wattage)

3. For #2,  that is important to see if your friend is able to host your machines for you, what if his Solar Panels are not efficient for him + you together?

4. Obvious factors such as Time (there's no sun at night! ), and weather! -- Just because the Sun is up, it doesn't mean that your solar is 100% covering you! Even during the noon your solar panels might not be fully 100%

5. What if it's cloudy? You will now be using power from his Grid/Battery. - Will your friend's grid/battery be sufficient for YOUR MINING HARDWARE + His usage? or will it overload? (you can't manually be babysitting the rigs every second so you've got to take all these into consideration)

6. The "Sell to the Grid during the day & Buy Back at night" is one of the best due to point #2 I mentioned above, as that way you're ensuring that you're using your Solar's full potential.. but this isn't available for every town in every country in the world, you've got to see if you are able to do that, even if your system supports it.

7. Think about if it's going to be worth it for you, to put a big capital into mining, if you're only going to be able to turn it on for couple hours a day, and might not be everyday. (Rainy/Cloudy days etc)

- Solar Panels are cheap, and in 2024 today's Panels are way more efficient than 8-10 years ago. ( It's about if you have a spot for them, whether its a land, or on top of a building)
- Decent Inverters are affordable & fully customizable with modern feature that will fit your liking. ( I've got my Solar monitored by a Raspberry pi monitor near my mining rigs, whilst the inverter is in the garage.)
- Batteries on the other hand, you don't want to over-invest in, they do not last, their BMS might disconnect if you're not on Grid, they will die out before they could pay back, i would get batteries enough to support you through the Grid switching and Cloudy days, instead of putting a big capital into Batteries if you're wanting your own Solar.
This would atleast enable to start having few hours a day, almost everyday able to mine freely for certain amount of power range, for a very cheap intial cost!

TLDR; Check his inverter system, see if he got spare power to give you, and check how much power your own hardware is going to use. IF you mean "200w solar panels" you've got to count how many panels he got. You can't only go by how much he's getting maximum per day! (see point #2)

So, basically, @philipma1957, your power factor means how many hours a day you could get the max wattage out of each panel, right?
I'm no expert but a 400W rated panel, usually cannot produce 400W every hour, in the best scenario.

Maybe I complicate things a bit but what I usually do to calculate these figures is to try to estimate how many hours a panel is exposed to sunlight in a day. I say for instance 6h. And in those 6h, I never use the rated Wattage of the panel. I always go lower. So, for instance for a 400W panel, I may work with 300W for 6 hour, as an average. So 1800W per day per panel. 200 panels would produce 360kW. It's not far from what you estimated. It's just a bit more conservative! Although conservative is good to dimenison a solar park, it may be actually worse to calculate how much energy you would need to buy back at night because you would need to buy back more!

Also using batteries are too expensive.

Most successful solar setups sell to the grid in the day and buy back at night.


full power factors run as low as 4 and as high as 6. I quote 5 to be in the middle.

The factor of 5 means how much power your panel will do in a day.

factor of 5 is 5 x the panel number

a 400 watt panel can do 5 x 400 = 2000 watts in a day. In most parts of the world.

If you are in a cloudy spot maybe lower say 4 or 4 x 400 = 1600 watts in a day.

If you are in the Sahara on the equator a factor of 6 is likely so 6 x 400 = 2400 watts in a day for 1 panel.

That is why I picked the middle number.

so 200 panels x 400 = 80,000 watts at peak.

I picked a 400 watt panel as it is fairly common.


80,000 watts at peak with a 5 factor is 400,000 watts in a day.


400,000/24 = 16667 watts .  this is the part people struggle with.

If your power company is good they buy your excess. then sell it back at night.

Since you have 400kwatts I divided by 24 and got 16.667 kwatts. a s21 is 3.6 kwatts 4 of them are 14.40kwatts

So if you run 4 s21's you burn 14.40 x 24 = 345.60 kwatts you earned 400 kwatts for the panels so 4 miners free with a bit left over is my number.

you could do 5 if you are in a sunny spot near the equator

My assumption are

400 watt panels
   5 for your power factor
1 to 1 buy back deal from the power company
 no batteries.




Now I do know of ways to make batteries cheap enough but it involves a deal with a battery/golf cart company and you using their dead batteries and refurbishing them.  So basically that is not your case or many other peoples case.

Not so complicated:

-ask your friend how much power his panels are giving on average
-check-out how much energy need some ASICs (Antminer S19, S21 for example)
-do the maths

If it is possible, you will need to do more researches on mining itself before taking any decision (pool payment types, different models of ASICs, BTC difficulty, how to use an ASIC in a effective way etc...)

It is not that complicated.  Solar panels make electricity, Bitcoin miners use electricity.  More panels equal more mining capacity potentially, but 200 panels means zilch without specifics.  Panel efficiency, sunlight where you live, actual watts pumped out - the deets matter. 

I don't understand anything. It seems difficult

a solar panel could be 400 watts so 200 x 400 = 80000 watts do a factor of 5 gives you 400,000 watts in a day.

If you have a proper buy back electric company you get 1 to 1 payback for excess.

translation take the 400k/24 = 16kwatts an hour 24/7/365

so 5 antminer s21's maybe or 4 ant miner s21's surely