Topic: Mining in a country with power challenges. (Read 911 times)

Especially in West Africa, blackout is known to be a very common thing that can last for days some times months!

The solution is not far from this advice, I will liken the power outage to my nation where national grid collapsed unpredictable and everything the electricity distribution company don't quarnatee you of light even when the grid is without collapsed, mining in sere of such electric or power issue need external power as listed by Notfuzzywarm, out side from such the mining can't work.

One need weigh and calculate the outage of the power to know the best alternative if solar, hydro or any other sources of power can be suitable why considering the cost of running external power outside from the national grid.

Well, you are going to have to use a mining pool despite the condition and cost of your electricity, but really that doesn't solve any issues related to power stability, I think he is a bot.



Speaking of "economy" there is no difference between developing and developed nations in that regard, it all boils down to the cost of power, many developing nations have cheaper power rate than some of the most developed countries, after all, all that matters to the miner is how much are they going to pay.

With everything being equal, if you had to choose between mining in a country where the power rate is 1 cent per KwH, where the power cuts 6 hours a day, vs mining in a country that has 24/7 power but sells it at 10 cents KwH, what would be more economically viable? I still remember the Chinese moving hundreds of thousands of miners a few thousand miles a few times a year just to get 2-3 cents lower power rates.

Lol… just look at the way you coined it…
Well he strayed. Am trying to fit it in terms of pooling resources but, it doesn’t explain what you would be contributing to the pool, mining from a region with long periods of power outage. It doesn’t go.

Apparently, the cost of running a mining farm isn’t something you could do economically using gasoline engines or which ever fossil fuel. You need some conventional energy source and should your nation have a good power holding authority and are able to produce and distribute well enough energy for a good number of hours.

It’s just something most developing nations are behind of.

I think he is a bot, in his first statement he said this


And then he suggested "possible solutions" which happen to be 


I am desperate to know how joining a mining pool solves the power outage issues for miners, it doesn't seem like something a human would say.

One of the great scams in BTC - yeah that's a bad suggestion you are making.

Mining requires a stable and consistent power supply, which can be a challenge in areas with frequent power outages. Possible solutions include investing in backup power sources like generators or solar panels, or relocating to an area with a more reliable power grid. Additionally, joining a mining pool or using cloud mining services may also be a viable option.

In a country where grid power is constantly epileptic, it is bad for an average Joe to go out and purchase an ASIC miner to mine Bitcoin, in the such country it is better to abandon the idea of buying an ASIC miner, you are better off buying Bitcoin with the money and hold.

If you have extra money that you aren't in rush to make back, then you can invest that in solar energy, mind you, your return of investment ( ROI ) will take a longer time to acquire, because you now have to make back the money you spent solar panels, batteries, and inverter, apart from the ASIC miner itself.

In places where power cuts are common it is a must for miners to get electricity uninterruptedly by using solar energy or using a generator. Frequent power cuts mean you live in an economically difficult place. You need to calculate your costs well while mining in this case. It can be advantageous for mining if you learn solar power installation. If you calculate that the energy stored by the sun is enough for mining definitely do it.

As far as the power outages is not epileptic as in frequent give and cease cases then you can manage it by keeping yourself abreast with the usual times the power stays on and also support yourself with other sources of power like solar power. One thing I know about these least developing countries with power outages challenge like some African countries the cost of power fees are not that high compared to European countries power charge rate.

You can actually calculate the percentage of success by simply knowing how often the power outages is.  How long your miner be able to continuously mine Bitcoin every day and the price of the electricity charges, and the maintenance cost.  You just need to calculate everything and see for yourself if your end result is a positive or a negative.  If it is negative then obviously, no matter what you do it won't change a thing that the environment where you wanted to establish your mining rig is not profitable.

Cost of energy have been the major challenges miners faces lately due to the hugh cost of electricity unite and unavailability of power supply 24/7 which affects mining operation and limit hours of miner activity due to power shortages.

Power generation is quite expensiveand that is the reason most miners now have limited resources to make a relaible7alternative oower supply and how much it will cost them and what the profits are and how the cost of power generation affects their overall revenue.

Also it is very likely that every few days on average one of those old and refurbished batteries will die or needs some maintenance. Since you will not directly know which one it is you will have a lot of maintenance work for the small profit that you could get during the dark hours. I think it would be a better advice to run a diesel generator if the fuel can be obtained cheap or get other energy source like hydro power that can run 24/7.

I knew a few scrap yards that buy lead acid car batteries by the pound.

If you had a deal with them you could get some cheap. dead batteries can be fixed if you know what you are doing.

the problem is most are six cell two volts a cell and if you are lucy you may restore three and four cells per battery. that is 6 to 8 volts so 7 of them is 42 to 56 volts

if they are all 100 amp and you charge them to 50 volts at 100 amps you have 5000 watts run them down to 2000 watts and you got to run your s19 for 1 hour. once the sun is down.

this means you need 70 refurbished batteries for 10:dark hours.

although if I was running off grid I would want the 70 batteries and only run 2 hours early and two hours late. plus the 9 to 12 hours there is sun.

ie maybe 12-16 hours a day. for 1 s19 and 70 partial refurbed junk batteries.

cost 1200 for used s19
at least 2100 for repurposed batteries
inverter 400
charger 200
panels 10 400 watt  2000

5900 and you run 1 s19 16 hours a day off grid for “free”

but just think of the space for 70 “refurbished batteries”

or 350 per new 100 amp which will do .6 kwatts so five for 1 hour. and 50 for 10 hours which is 17500

Ya, something like that MIGHT work, but if he got a $100 battery for $10, it would make more economical sense to actually sell it for $100 and make 90$ proft rather than use it to mine, the real value of the battery is still $100 not 10$, so it still technically costs him 100$, so long story short, it doesn't work. .

What he needs is a revolutionary discovery that brings batteries' cost to 10% of what they cost now, maybe someone manages to make nickel or lithium out of thin air, or crazy Elon Musk finds them in space for cheap, it's possible, maybe in a century or two.

He would need to get surplus batteries at 90% discount to make solar off grid work.

He can also place his gears on the surface of the sun and get to use free power.

What you saying is true, with enough investment you can get off the grid, but do you have the slightest clue how much it costs to get to that stage? there is NO WAY that you can mine BTC profitability being 100% off the grid, you will need to invest maybe a hundred thousand dollars in solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, just to run a few miners that might earn you $1000 a month, despite being independent of the grid and paying no bill, the cost of the setup is just way too high to justify doing.

So the short answer is NO, you can't count on solar to mine BTC unless you generate way more than you need, sell the surplus to the grid, but it back when your solar system is not generating any power, which of course, isn't an option for countries that still face power outages.

The best option is to generate your own power by yourself, which may have a high cost of Maintainance but then it's better if your national grids are unreliable to supply power without interruption.

Solar systems are of different grades and all you need do is to get the one that can power your devices and as long as you keep maintaining it, you will become free from National power instability.

Maybe in this situation where there is a shortage or loss of electricity, the only solution I see here is if you have the money to buy a generator or a solar panel, it can be a solution to this problem.

I don't see anything else that is good but this is only if the scenario is this difficult especially if you are still a bitcoin miner.

One of the keys to success for a prospective miner looking to start mining bitcoin in a country that experience power outages is for the individual to use multiple alternate sources of energy. The miner would have have to map out where in his or her country where this alternative sources of power is easy available, cheap, and favourable local laws too. For example, I did a thread on this some time ago on ideal crypto mining locations in my country where power outages is experienced

Those batteries look neat, but they cost an arm and a leg, but anyway, using any type of battery for mining operations is a terrible idea, you can run the math and it looks ugly, batteries are just so expensive, despite all the new tech in the batteries industry, in respect to how powerful computers are and how much power they need, batteries are still in the realm of" a few hundred years late", in fact, anything except for large hydro power stations will not make sense when it comes to mining.


There is really no guarantee that this will be the case, I rather mine with expensive but stable power than free and unstable power, places that have power outages usually have more issues to deal with like voltages spikes and drops, besides the constant off-on on the miner can be bad, miners LOVE to run in a passive state, most of the issues will happen during the power-on/off phase.

Also, OP needs to know exactly how long those outages last, is it a few seconds a day? half the day without power? I mean let's just assume it's 12 hours a day, that means your ROI time is 2x, and given that we all are in a race against difficulty, you may never ROI before the gear becomes completely worthless.

The issues I explained earlier can be solved, you can protect your gears from spikes and drops using some tools that are not very expensive, so the real question boils down
(How many hours in a day do the power outage last and how much do you pay per Kwh for when the power is back) without knowing these exact two answers, it's just a shot in the dark.

How long do the outages last and how much space do you have? There are many places now selling things like the Tesla powerwall. More for commercial / semi-commercial environments then for home use.

In the end they are really just BIG battery backups but they are using old lithium car batteries so for the power they produce the cost is less then going out and buying a massive Schneider Electric unit https://www.se.com/ww/en/product-range/22545656-galaxy-vl/?parent-subcategory-id=8030#overview

There are also solutions that just let you chain a large number of regular 12V car batteries together. Not as efficient and it takes up an insane amount of space but they do work.

All depends on where you are and how much you want to spend and how much space you have and how much time you want to spend maintaining it.

-Dave

Sorry I should have been more specific, the power outages are often, and when the power is on, it is typically around 220v but sometimes fluctuates and may fall below that.

A small scale hydro is not plausible to me, Wind? It is not windy around where I reside so it may be a futile effort to want to harness the power of the wind. I just considered the generators powered by PMS or diesel but that will not be economical. So the best options for me i guess according to my location is Solar, and Gas powered generators.

Thank you for spelling out the power requirements.

if free, then successful more than a miner in a country where the power cost is very expensive  

Anyway there are so many factors to look into like it has been suggested above, You might want to be a little more specific. You might also want to look at the cost of power backup solutions in your country, like Solar energy.

You have posed a very vague question. Outages how often? How good is the power when it is on?

If power outages are a very frequent thing then you need to get power that is not tied to your grid. eg solar, wind, small scale hydro etc.

If outages are common but not a regular thing then one has to ask how stable is the power when it is on? Miners MUST have a stable incoming voltage typically between 208-240VAC. Prolonged operation below or above that range will quickly kill the miners.

What is the possibility of becoming a successful miner or the chances of success for a miner in a country that still experiences power outages?

Please suggest any and all possible solutions to this challenge for a bitcoiner interested in giving mining a trial in a country that still experience power outages?