Topic: New mining venture - consultation sought (Read 532 times)

Ok, I'll see what I can do......still very much at the embryonic stage though. But posting here will probably serve as an unofficial 'push' for me to get things do

Is there a chance of you keeping and regularly posting a modest, anonymous log of this project? I would find the adventure to be incredibly interesting to read about.

All the spills, thrills and chills would be riveting, as would a breakdown of the financial side as your effort unfolds. We could vicariously live the life of a Crypto explorer through your reports :-)

Ja. Yes the initial up-front costs are a bit higher because of using (preferably redundant) pumps and the large dry cooler plus a small basic PLC for monitoring temp/flow/other things status to keep an eye on the operations and phone home to report as needed. But the massive increase in reliability and near zero maintenance makes it perfect for unattended remote operations.

Speaking of reliability and getting what you pay for of course Canaan and their Avalon miners comes to mind. The Avalons stand out as being utterly reliable with very few failures reported vs Bitmain, Innosilicon and others. Canaan has already made announcements about immersion cooling the 841 series and I recall recently seeing mention somewhere about Canaan offering an immersion cooled A10 series version.
edit: Found the Twitter feed from Canaan about the A1047 immersion cooled miner dated July 24th this year.

I highly suggest you talk to Steven Mosher  [email protected] who is Canaan's Director of Global Marketing. He is very open to communications and is a regular here in the Forum regarding major topics involving the Avalons. I think he and his company would be very interested in this venture...

As for apprecieation, well I do have a tips jar BTC address  1FuzzyWc2J8TMqeUQZ8yjE43Rwr7K3cxs9 in my sig....  

I sure can, thanks I'll send over some details.

Apart from giving out merits how else can one like or thumbs up a response? Thanks again for such a detailed answer.

I hope he chooses immersion, given his energy savings it would be well worth the investment. There's an old saying "You get what you pay for".

Ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower and this maker (one of many many) https://jcequipments.com/dry-cooling-tower-india.html
A dry tower simply does not use any water running over the outside of the heat exchanger that is transferring heat from the fluid to the outside air. Wet or more correctly, evaporative, cooling towers are only needed if one must produce fluid temps lower than ambient outside air temps. One company that already does the whole package for miners is https://www.engineeredfluids.com/for-crypto-currency

The temps I stated are the chip temps. Because miners are normally using air cooling and have rather limited sized heatsinks inside of them that is what sets the typical ambient air temp restrictions. Any sort of liquid cooling massively increases the effectiveness of a heat sink.

Well, BitFury's farms ARE all liquid cooled.
Why don't others do it? Aside from the time it takes to remove fans and plug in a fan simulator (to keep cgminer happy) for each miner, no idea. Seems a no-brainer to me especially if you are putting miner containers into remote areas.

Ya the fluids used to cool the miners are not cheap but still, I see no downside to it.

As for sizing the cooling tower, easy: determine how much power you are feeding the miners ( I read somewhere a typical small well can support up to around 250kw), convert to BTU's (1kw = 3412.142 BTU's), know the maximum outside air temp where the miners & towers are located, use say 60C as maximum desired fluid outlet temp from the tower and give that info to the cooling tower manufacturer.  While they will also need to know the flow rate the coolant moves at (depends on the size of miner tanks and thermal characteristics of the fluid used) they can then provide the correctly sized tower to do what you need.

Oh, and here is an announcement from a Canadian company that is doing flare gas powered mining: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/01/22/1298376/0/en/Cryptocurrency-Mining-Operation-Launched-by-Oil-and-Gas-Producer-Iron-Bridge-Resources.html
and
https://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2018/1/junior-producer-leverages-cheap-natural-gas-mine-cryptocurrencies-rock-bottom-prices/

@BitcoinRefiner...we still can't PM each other.....can you reach me on ozoro99atgmail?

@Notfuzywarm.....what's a dry cooler tower? For real.....miners can run in excess of 50C without fans or A/C's ? what's the downside? why don't all miners use immersion cooling?

the concept seems very interesting and dare I say revolutionary.

@WhyFhy....once again you come up trumps......I've checked out your link and I am waiting to hear back from them. But they're boasting they can reduce CapEx by 25%......maybe on the more expensive and larger roll-outs. But we wait and see what they've got to offer.....sounds really good in all manner of ways...deployment, cost, efficiency, etc

The major advantage to immersion cooling is that it eliminates all issues with using filter walls to clean the massive airflow miners normally require. The only airflow component is the dry cooling tower that sits outside. With a dry cooler no water is flowed over the hot exchanger, just uses high airflow and the exchanger itself cannot clog.

For ref, a dry cooler can be used because miners are quite happy running at chip temps over 60C and it is not uncommon to see 90-100C chip temps. That means that the coolant used does not have to be chilled in any way (no water/refrigeration) and even if it is 50C (122F) outside as long as the tower can keep chip temps in range you are golden. Since with immersion the chip temps pretty much = the coolant temp you can actually be circulating very warm/hot fluid and the chips will be perfectly happy.

Ran into this.
https://submer.com/knowmore?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvo_qBRDQARIsAE-bsH_DA0VMTSzPFkOhtlfDRmtJpMjsLJi1tzbsdBOG5k0dm1MaIPY2f6QaAlraEALw_wcB
I'm sure it cost an arm and a leg but would put you on the right track quick. I've never seen the vendors until researching today.
Few quotes from the site


Put it on stilts, cover it (breatheable) ,  Slap a genny on it or tie in, buy equipment ,deploy , set and forget.

Glad it was useful, Phil filled in great advice considering your area might be prone to flash floods not sure if your in the high ground or not. Either way raising things up is the way to go, nobody wants a wet mine. I second the other part as well, for new gear anyways. As soon as you are committed and moving forward place a pre-order for the gear as most gear won't ship until November. This way you can also watch the market for used gear if you go that route. Feel free to PM me if you have questions I'll do my best to help if I can.

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This is off-topic. Hopefully you stick around the forum, it's always nice to see new people coming in here. You might have sorted it but a couple posts on the first page your replies are within the quote - to fix that just be sure to start typing after the [/quote]. I reformatted it in the quote above if that makes sense.

I gave you 2 merits. Should take you out of newbie status more quickly.

You have a merit to give. Try to find a newbie that looks good and give him a merit.

It will help him out like I helped you out.

Thank you sooo much everybody for very useful comments, I will PM those who have asked me to reach out to them. Am a newbie on this forum, so am just learning about 'merits', I'll be dishing them out if my newbie status allows.

I welcome more comments and advice.

Cheers everybody

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@bitcoinrefiner......please reach me ozoro99atgmail

Cheers

Energy rates are not an issue for the OP as they are using normally flared waste gas to power on-site generators. Of course the generators should be rated for Prime-power usage so they can 24x7 run for months between scheduled maint.

I'm developing projects in South Africa and Senegal at the moment. Africa's a great and untapped region.

You are welcome to get in touch if you want to compare notes.

I can't message you with my contact information as you have PM's from newbie's disabled and I'm not very active on here.

Either way, I'm sure you'll succeed and there is no shortage of information and friendly people here to offer advice.

If your energy rates are similar to the ones I've seen in Africa, most concerns discussed can be mitigated by throwing money at it. The critical factor is that you are familiar with business in the region and it sounds like you are.

Throw me a PM with some contact details if you'd like to talk.

Im out of merit!!!!!! Get this man some merit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic information, you guys are brilliant!!

Buy 20 or more  m20s. They come in November.

They cost about 54000 plus shipping for 20 of them.

You can set up a cooling plan along with a building.

You need a generator since you are burning free fuel.

20 m20s use 67 to 70 kwatts.

If you have a 100kwatts generator it should cover that.


If you use a container.

Put it on six foot stilts.

Draw air from the floor as air is shaded.

Blow air out high in the container

Or put a small peak A shaped  roof on container to shade it.

It is important to have containers on stilts

AIDS in cooling and prevents floods.

I would stagger the build.

Add 20 m20s at a time since it gives you some safety for loss or delay of shipments.

Maybe two containers with two generators
Set them two to three months apart.

Stuff breaks
Stuff breaks.

If you buy m20s buy some spare parts.

I own

S17
T17
S15
T15
M20s
M21s
M10
S9

I have spare parts for the gear above.

I have
Avalon a1041
Avalon a921
Avalon a721
No spare parts from them they tend to not break

I have

Inno t3t39th
Inno t2t24th
Inno t3t50th

No spare parts but gear is clocked low.

@steamtyme,
thank you very much for your detailed response.
I will study the cold aisle/hot aisle you've mentioned. The temperatures will regularly top 35°C and it's  humid with heavy downpours.
am looking to start ASAP ...the halving is scary, but hopefully it will eventually result in higher prices.

thanks for the list.

Cheers

I agree but at a 300k budget I think he could wing it remotely after some initial smoothing over at first.

I can easily tell you for under 1k miners you don't need more than 3 people for 24/7. You need 1-2 people if you want 7 day coverage but the cost for people might not be worth it. Most of the time not many problems happen, lots of time spent sitting around idle so if you do want to hire people make sure they do other things as well. 1 person can easily manage a few thousand machines after they are setup and running. (it's mostly the setup that needs people)

You guys have covered a lot of the important parts. I'll just chime in with a few things.

30C for temps is not bad, it's well within the specs of most miners out there. If by regularly you mean it will hit and hold 30 for a couple weeks you would likely want to use more intake and exhaust fans for your build. Unless you are tipping the thermometer above 40C consistently you won't need to use any other cooling methods that will eat into your profits, you can also use LP modes if available for your gear on these days.

How remote is this mine going to be? If this is say on a plantsite where you are located it really just needs to be a building with the ability to run a wall down the middle with intake fans on the 1 side and exhaust fans on the other, the miners fit into holes in the wall. This creates your hot/cold aisle for your mine. Build it with 100 in mind even if you only go with 50 this way you can add to it if the opportunity presents itself. Look up hot aisle/cold aisle in data centers for a good idea of what I described.

Just a note floorspace wise you can put 100 miners in a 25' row stacked 5 high using shelving. With the proper airflow the miners do just fine being bunched in close quarters; it's the air moving through the machine that matters.

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Specking in your power requirements are going to be a bit harder and will be something you need to weigh and consider. I've never built a facility, but the requirements between 50 and 100 machine is drastically different, and varies even more so depending on what you buy. You are looking at a requirement of 55KW to 330KW   with hashrates from 700TH to 6.5 PH . This is a range from s9's to M20S machines. I give you a range like that so you can consider what is cost effective for your situation. If your electricity is cheap enough you don't need the most efficient miners you can go with older gen gear and still turn a profit, or a mix.

I am guessing you have some industrial resources at your disposal so you may already know where to source the equipment and get power installed to the location. This can vary a lot and can dictate what is available to you, again if the price isn't a massive difference you may want to size it larger so you can handle the more powerful current gen miners. It comes down to risk/reward and your vision for your business.

I will note that you are getting into a risky venture and rewards aren't guaranteed. Next year does bring a halving event as well, which can put your facility in flux. If you are serious move as fast as you can to get things in place. Every day costs you 1 day of lower difficulty mining.

This might help.

Current List of Competitive Hardware - July 2019 Has listed distributors and manufacturers of gear.

Ill pm you an email you can reach me at.

@Whyfhy

Sir,  (I presume you're male, apologies if I have committed a cardinal mistake) you sound like just what am looking for, I will private message you in the next few hours.

thank you for your time and responses

It's a speculative venture so you cannot make any guarantee's and I wouldn't.
You can order a ready to go container and likely save on cost. I believe Stryfe at Mopar Mining has one ready to go right now for 20,000 usd but its a storage unit i think.
Ive been working on a decay calculator for about 2 years , this calculator isnt complete yet and factors historical averages on difficulty,rewards, via json scrapers. It will be more accurate then given estimates from current calculators.
You might as well consider about XX% compounded decay on rewards too and consider reinvesing a portion of your operation back in to prevent nulling out.
You can waterwall cooling (swap cooler) its cheap as hell.(not the ones that mist) you can also refrigerate mineral oil on an industrial scale and immerse, but this requires a staff member thats compliant on that aspect(refrigerant ammonia blah blah).
I would step 3p to 30amp PDU's , you can cancel out employers by monitoring/automating sorta like a smart home , so buy pdu's with networking built in for physical resets if ssh hangs.
I remotely consult and can give you draft proposals ive used in the past to give you an idea how to present your investors while covering yourself in liabilities. (Again its a speculational venture)
I consult for flat fee's during deployment , or long term at agree upon operation percentage reduction via MultiSig  (Like 1-15% depending on the operation size and efficiency )


I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

@Whyfhy

Wouldn't I need to have some idea of layout when building the infrastructure? In producing the business plan I will need details of tech...hardware, software...even details of how 'coins' mined will be recorded and sold. My backers are 'oilmen' and have no idea of crypto. The infrastructure is the easy bit.

You say 60 days lead time for the hardware.....am seeing the ability to buy mining hardware seems so difficult, the manufacturers all seem to have the best models sold out, there are seems to be quantity limits on what individual customers can buy at any one time. Other threads on this forum seem to say being on a waiting list is not a good idea as tech changes relatively quickly and all potential estimates can change dramatically with difficulty levels, BTC price movements, etc

I suppose what am asking, is how can put down a real 'factual' business plan (with emphasis on the tech) other than what I've picked in my cursory studies and knowledge.

Ideally would love to be starting to 'mine' within 90 days (especially if am using modified sea containers)

PS
yes. cooling is going to be a major issue, any suggestions, outside temperature regularly hits 30 degrees centigrade. I wonder how Florida and Texas based miners 'cool down' their equipment.

Cheers

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Additional question how genuine are the adverts for mining hardware on 'Alibaba'? prices seem too good to be true

Then your off to a good start! Cooling could be a factor but here in TX its not too big of an issue.
But yea deploy infastructure first then look for miners as infrastructure is within 60 days of completion , what you look for now might not be available when you pull the trigger.

@Whyfhy
Thanks for your reply.

Infrastructure shouldn't be  too much a problem, I can relatively easily throw up 1050 sq ft (100m2) high ceiling warehouse, alternatively I can use converted shipping containers. I am locating in African oil fields, with access to electricity generated by 'waste natural gas'. We regularly ship out all sorts of heavy equipment to those fields, shipping in a bunch of computers and building a 'shed' will be in within our normal operations.

Yep, we currently use satellite for our internet access.

I am thinking our major challenge is understanding the technology, no doubt we'll need to employ 2 or 3 operators (at least to start with) - they will need to be available 24/7 I presume. But that can be arranged.

Frankly I think there's a good resource and potential set up waiting to be exploited. BTW our power supply is natively 220V/240V.

Dont get ahead of yourself here, You need to deploy infrastructure first By time you've deployed your infrastructure and you have something audit ready there might be a new generation of miners out. (worry about the machines later and focus on consumption averages 2000-3000watts )
If its remote you also need to factor in freight/shipping as it might be a major cost for you.
In US we cant deploy "used" solar systems and tie in , can you where you are? (We can bank used though) Major cost differences in new and used here.
you'll likely need a satellite internet provider.

I've been into Bitcoin since 2016, heavily since 2017. Traded largely on LBC and used BTC for remittance and arbitrage. I have zero coding skills. Am an entrepreneurial businessman who believes strongly in 'hard' money and the ethos behind bitcoin in particular and if proven alt coins in general. I am also not adverse to making money with a bit of hard work, honesty and luck.

I have potential VC capital of $300,000 USD and I looking to setup a Bitcoin mining farm. This farm is to be placed in a very inhospitable tropical climate in the middle of the forest but with access to cheap electricity. Will need to set our own internet access and obviously independent power source.

Am looking on setting up such an operation, from construction of bricks and mortar in the most efficient way to disperse heat, the deployment and installation of between 50 to 100 machines.....Antimer S17 or T17 seems a good bet (MicroBT Whatsminer M205 seems a good alternative) - whats with this Innosilison 200= T/h's? - (this a pointer how naïve I am , advice on cabling and connections, advice on software and running the nodes, and all the other things I obviously don't know, I need advice on all these areas.

Free advice on this forum is very welcome but PM me if you can offer professional/semi professional advice for a fee (small fee )