Topic: Solar Mining (Read 4152 times)

Now bitcoin price rose that much i think solar mining should have become a profitable business, isn't it?

Building a solar farm is still costly but if you sell your mined bitcoins as soon as you mine them, you should be able to get your ROI in no time.

Yep buysolar and I have a joint venture with his array.

But he has a 2 acre field filled with panels.

We are in NJ,lack  of light in the,winter lowers the free power but moving the miners from a barn to his basement gives him free heat.

So we can make the system work.

Say 11 kwatts in the summer and 6 kwatts in the winter.

Ha ha ha! TO power up a profitable bitcoin mining setup using alternate energy, you need a decent amount of space to install that many solar panels. Initially the cost of installing will be high, but that's an one time cost. Once you are done, you will be able to make profit because you won't have to pay electricity cost.

Howevee, wind turbine is not a feasible idea because you need to invest a lot more than solar panels and also you will need a big place to install one. If you have a farm house with fair amount of land, then it might be a good idea, otherwise scrap it and try altcoin mining.

Guys, you are getting nowhere with this. Solar panels are worth it only if you get a lot of sun hours per day. For instance in Arizona there's plenty of sun, but the more North you go the worse it gets for the panels.

Map: expected number of full sun-hours you can expect in different locations. 1 sun-hour equals 1 kWh per square meter per day

Too expensive

we are not talking about solar used in home choirs and surely if we used that at home we can minimize or shall we say lessen the fee unlike using the coal/geotermal electricity, a

One thing i must say but not sure is we cannot still guarantee to earn and lessen the fees by using solar power since i think it has still high of maintenance cost and we trully need to be knowledgable on using it so we can earn some profits on mining itself.

i think we can use the solar energy in our daily life, i see the example of this and the electricity in daily is always on except the place to save the electricity energy is empty. but for your info, to build our solar electricity need a big cost but after that, we can free of the charge in monthly to not pay the fee by monthly, at least we only need to maintain our solar electricity from any damage.

Your idea is much better than to use electricity directly that we purchase with monthly bill .
Actually here the best way to use solar energy for bitcoin mining is to have a solar inverter and solar direct DC to ac plate ( rectifier circuit ) .
About 2 years ago one of my friends used the miner with electricity of solar panel .
He just simply bought the solar inverter and then connected the ac output of the inverter with miner and pc , here I am.not sure that which of thebitcoin miner was using by him ,.but his plan was working .
Unfortunately a problem occur here , you can't use solar inverter in the night because you can generate electricity fro. your backup batter more than 4-5 hours , so mining can be done perfectly in the day light time
.

To the best of my knowledge I'm the first person to mine with solar energy.
A previous poster said to just get a solar panel with a micro inverter and plug it in to an outlet. In my state and most states in the US that's completely illegal and potentially life threatening. You need to get special permissions and equipment before plugging it into your house electrical circuit. Without getting the appropriate approvals you could be subjecting yourself to criminal charges. Additional, you could be risking setting your house on fire, if you're not aware of how to properly size circuits for back feeding solar energy. So make sure that you're taking the proper precautions and consulting with professionals before you start plugging solar panels into outlets in your home.
With that said, right now solar energy is very cheap compared to other sources. The safest method for powering a miner would be to get a miner that is configured to be powered by DC energy either 12volt, 24volt or 48. Then purchase a quality charge controller configured to put out that voltage that also has set points for minimum maximum battery discharge for shutdown and startup. Add a cheap battery from a local supplier, And purchase a quality solar panel with a 20 year warranty or get a used solar panel from a reputable supplier.  This will be the least expensive way to power a miner, the miner would only run when the sun is putting out enough energy to power the miner but you will have paid for the energy to run the miner for as long as the miner continues to work, if you'd like you could expand the system with batteries but that will add extra expense.   

https://www.EcologicalSystems.biz is located in NJ has an excellent reputation and has been in business for over 20years. They currently have used solar panels available for 20cents/watt and brand new panels for as low as 45cents/watt.

Shipping costs for solar tend to be a big part of the expense. So often times the price per watt for small orders is less important than the cost of delivery. You might be better off getting solar panels at a higher price per watt from a local company, than having them shipped to you.

Hello guys,
as an expert in photovoltaic sizing I will try to help you out.

First,
Forget about the classic system ( panel + MPPT controller + battery bank + inverter ) because the battery cost almost half the price of the system and even the better deep cycle batterties are not suited to this kind of use.
To give you an idea, the more profitable batteries (Lithium) have a cost of around 0.10$ per kWh stored (for their entire life). Plus you need to respect many conditions ( storage temperature, charging/discharging rates..) if you don't want to see your battery dead after a few months.

So, you just can't store electricity and use it for mining, it's a complete nonsense.


The best solution if you still want solar powering is the following :
A direct use of the electricity produced with a micro inverter ! It's a device including a MPPT controller and an inverter. Once the solar panel pluged on it, you plug its output to a socket in your house, it recognize the voltage and frequency and start providing electricity for your house grid at theese ratings.

You can start with only one classic panel of 60 cells (250W) and a 250W micro inverter, costing around 250 dollars, and you can add more when you want because micro inverters can be parallelized.

At the moment it's the best solution for an individual, you can only partially power your miners but it's still interesting. In france ( my place ) electricity costs 0.17$ during the day (when the sun shines!) and 0.12$ during the night so it's quite perfect.
My module (1panel + 1 micro inverter) is paid after 6 years and nowadays a solar panel is guaranted 25 years and inverters 10 years. Plus, if you know good manufacturers your inverter will last for decades
And there is almost no maintenance (half an hour per year).

Sorry for my english, it's not native for me ^^'
Feel free to ask details if you didn't understand some points.

Happy solar mining !

You need to be analytical here, find out how much power your mine is going to consume and then we can help you with the number of cells and battery ratings that you might need and its accompanying amount so just get us the specifics and clarity and we will be able to render you some support.

I have to say if there was ever an attempt for a crowdfunding project for a large scale solar + wind powered bitcoin mining operation I would consider investing.
Of course it would need to be a very transparent operation by people with an awesome reputation etc.

If you build your own Solar power circuit along with a wind circuit to compensate for less sunny days you will be able to mine. However, to be profitable you need to be the one developing the whole system and assembling the sun power cells, the wind turbine and then you will need to develop some kind of transformer and battery that ensures you don~t waste any energy in the process...
 ... impossible for sure...

i just believe that solar panels and everything else(like battery) simply cost too much, for them to make sense the price should be 1/8, this because you need 8kwh of panels to cover 1kwh of consumption for the entire day...

and with this you are not going to pay in advance for your power which doesn't make sense, you need to roi on the equipment already "roiying" on the solar panel too make little sense, it's like you bought another "miner" that save energy instead of mining

Neither is efficient enough, nor will you ever break even with the setup costs. You'd make more money selling off that miner to a budget farm or other people with cheaper electricity. Or if there's a hydrodam near you just think like the Chinese and sign contracts with them (sarcasm)

It's good to know. This would certainly meet the demand of users who want to invest in Bitcoin mining. In addition, it's something with potential to lessen uncertainties regarding electricity costs. This is what keeps many users away from mining.

There will be.  Soon...  I suspect there isn't enough room for profitability to entice traditional companies, but I'm certain the opportunity for the public to gain solar exposure in the Bitcoin mining space isn't far away.

Given the fact that mining by conventional methods is difficult today, one of the possibilities I was considering is a solar powered mining farm, but it seems that there are many variables that make this process complicated to the majority of users. It would be interesting if there were companies providing services related to this, to allow users to have more facility in constituting these farms.

That's what I'm talking about. Even paying $0.2 per kWh, which is a relatively high price, is more efficient than using solar panels, let alone in places where electricity is cheaper. I'm not sure that the situation is the same with using wind energy though.

It wont really cover the expenses since we all know that using those alternative source of electricity is expensive which means its not really profitable and roi would be longer and we should think that our miners would anytime would bust. SOurce of electricity+ maintenance will cost you a lot.

In the logic, if that will be decreasing the lifespan of batteries. And the consumed power has used for running an ASIC, it can be distributing for running some GPU.

In fact you are absolutely right, it's not efficient....my link was referring to OP that said he can't find one....
The problem isn't to find it, but that the revenues from mining with solar/wind energy didn't cover expense....better to mine with traditional power energy 

The wind generator turbine you are referring to can produce up to 300 Watts Max and it costs approximately $300. You will need four of those for just one Antminer S7. You can do the math to see how "efficient" is that.

That's are not used but new....in all case i agree that is not best choice, and panels in the link are only for "domestic"use...
Btw, here is a 300 watt  solar wind turbine, place it in yur garden and get your BTC blocks 
http://www.banggood.com/High-Efficiency-300W-DC12V24V-6-Blades-Wind-Turbine-Generator-p-956404.html

Wind turbine as high as two storey i think will be enough. Alternator or maybe a DC motor will do the job, horizontal turbines works well than the vertical by the way. Two large car batteries can last i think. but you may not be able to mine Bitcoin, Asic devices will drain your batteries. you can do it with GPU. ETH or XMR is good.

I believe solar is still too expensive to make a profit using it for mining (for the most part).

I bet since they are manufactured in Europe they are of really high quality. I have seen it take quite a lot of the older Solar panels bolted to a roof facing South, just to heat a swimming pool during the Winter time mid December until mid March in Southern Nevada just outside of Vegas an area known to have historically warmer Winters.

I wonder if a combination of say high end European Manufactured Solar Panels along with one of those Wind Turbines with the 3 ft Titanium Props mounted 30ft in the air on a well secured ground pole. The combination of the wind and solar power produced could be stored in golf cart Batteries that feed into Inverters to convert the energy that then feeds the Bitcoin ASIC Miners. Keep a clean running Natural Gas Generator hooked into the grid to serve as backup on Cloudy/Rainy/Zero Wind days.

Even if a situation  were to be properly fine tuned to work, its my guess that equipment costs which could include construction of specialized fire proof sheds to house all the 12-24 Volt Golf Cart Batteries, Inverters, Proper Cabling, concrete pad poured for the Pole with the mounted Wind Turbine, Solar Panels, Wiring, a couple Antminers and an electrician to over see installation. My guess is you would obtain 50% ROI over 20 years. Granted I am just guessing here, I have no idea if any of this would work in the first place along with no reasonable formulas to come to any conclusion. One gentleman above said it more simply and accurate regarding the massive cost of storing the produced power.

If you are able to power an ASIC Bitcoin Miner like a new Antminer R4 through the use of any clean or renewable energy for a profit or not, please make sure to come back to this thread and keep us updated regarding your progress on such a cool project as this.

Good Luck!!!!

Best,

Buying used solar panels is risky. Normally they go out of order sooner than you expect and fixing them cost money. I don't know about a wind turbine but you can forget about profiting using solar for now.

I know guys who are manufacturing solar panels in Europe for export worldwide. If you need cheap ones I can ask them what price they can offer.

As i see very hard to accmplish the task, maybe you can find some cheap solar panel here
http://www.banggood.com/search/solar-panel/2745-0-0-0-0-0-0-price-0-0_p-1.html

for now, i think yes that power energy is expensive but with the new technologies, i think we can buy the equipment when the price is down and we can trying to use in our home. but its need a lot of to do before that energy is ready to use.

Just like what other members said above this just a pure crazy thing or idea on planning to have a solar or alternative electricity source on just powering up or operating an R4 miner and planning to have solar mining which we all know that it is expensive to build one and its just really a waste of money and a nonsense step to consider.

Running 24/7 isn't gonna help..

Read the whole post, dude. You can't be running your mining hardware up to 24 hours and it's mean you will never be profitable.

That is pure crazy here. You must store big energy in backup when there is no wind/solar power.
So power storage is expensive, solar/wind power is expensive, what u trying to acomplish here? To loose money? You can do that easier

Hey Guys my name is Dan and im trying to find a way to power a antminer r4 by using a solar panel/wind turbine solution but i cant seem to find any.
Help is much appreciated.