Topic: Using renewable energy to mine? - page 2. (Read 5851 times)

I've had sub 2 thousand watts orders of panels delivered to my house for under $1/watt, anybody who thinks they are going to build them cheaper than that is insane.  You can get solar laminates for $.64/watt right now and I've seen $.50/w in the past, which supposedly can be used without a frame. Or frame them, and still come out ahead of DIY panels

Umm you don't need to run a 20x1 cell grid just to get 20 panels all in series. You can do a 5x4 cell grid, and still keep them in series. This gives you about a 3'x4' panel, and I got plenty of space for 30-40 of such panels, between my house, and my 2 car garage next to the house (whose roof is facing south as well).

Please help me to find damnd block on my pool http://alvarez.sfek.kz 

That's cheap, half price of cells bought in Europe. In my opinion one should get mono crystalline cells, 4-4.20 watts per cell. less soldering, less roof space used.

Are you including gov subsidiaries?

Ah China, guess you can get everything from that whacky country these days.

Do you have enough space for all this? Not sure what your final power plan is, but these cells are rated at .613V, assuming you want 12V DC that's still ~20 cells in series, or 10' x 6" (you could make smaller panels and hook those up in series of course), 7kW (5000 kwh / month) of 12V power would require a huge number of 10'x6" strips. Unless you meant 5000 kwh / yr, which would definitely be more doable.

I mean buying something like this: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1472pcs-x-3-95Watt-B-grade-156mm-x-156mm-6-x-6-Poly-solar-cells/543644854.html

and manually soldering them all together, building/sealing enclosures, and wiring them up yourself.

$1500 for the panels, and I'm guessing ~$2500 for all the other materials (electrical, frames, glass, sealant, etc). About 4kUSD for ~5kwh of panels. My house sits at the top of a hill in Maine, and the back roof faces south and has almost continuous sunshine all day. It's ideal for solar, but I don't mind putting the man hours into lowering the initial investment and getting into it as cheap as I can.

I don't really follow. $2 / watt is more than you would pay for a professionally put together finished panel. I'm not aware of solar cell wholesalers, so it's hard for me to check, but I've certainly been wrong before.

I suppose there is nothing really to prevent you from doing it your way, except material, time, tools and working space.

You can buy kits with A or B grade cells and solder interconnects. You pay 2$/watt that way.

You measure up the cells under a lamp to have similar current capable cells in same panel, then you solder and glue the cells on the backing. Put glass on top and seal airtight to prevent oxidation of the cells.

I think you mean did you pay for professional installation of the system? No one DIYs a panel, you have to buy one, regardless of whether it is second-hand, B-grade, or whatever.

It certainly is a lot of work though, that's why the panels themselves are usually only about 50% of the cost of residential installation.

So for the people that have invested in Solar: Did you buy the panels, or DIY? It seems that DIY panels can be had for a lot cheaper, but take a LOT of work.

I want to know if anyone has their op powered with solar or wind :p

Peter Schiff - The Treasury Is Complaining About the Cost to Print Money
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Pi89C_NBI

 

I don't think you've thought this through....

Any data center is already going to have a backup system to provide AC power as I assume you'd still want to be able to run all your network gear in the event of a power outage?  Or maybe you're fine running a miner with no network to talk to?  So the cost of adding a few 100 more watts of ASIC gear is going to be negligible...

But you purpose to run new wires for a DC distribution system straight to your equipment?  Maybe you're familiar with ohm's law?  A direct 12 volt line is going to need 10 to 20 times the current as your standard 120/240 AC to run the same load.  That means you're going to be needing to run some big wires to handle even a reasonable amount of equipment.  100 feet of 1 AWG is probably going to cost more than the solar panels need to run it.
I'm sure you're not the first to go 'hey.... these batteries are 12 volt and my computer needs 12 volt...' but there is a reason no one does it on a large scale.  The math just stops working.
I've seen proposals for such DC powered systems, but they're not something you just randomly add to an existing datacenter. They are carefully engineered high voltage DC systems that use double conversion UPS and are built from the ground up.


But that still doesn't do anything to refute my main point.
If you can put up solar panels to produce energy on a cheaper per kilowatt hour basis then you can get it from the grid then it shouldn't matter where the power goes... a few ASIC miners or stright into your main breaker.  Cheaper is cheaper and it would make sense to put up as many panels as possible because with very little expection the more panels you put up the more cost effective the system becomes.



And lose the taxes breaks? Never

Anyone interested in buying solar panels or wind turbines for BTC?? was looking a while ago into setting up a business for this... so just interested in peoples thoughts/interest

You either didn't read what I said or mis-interpreted what I was saying. The cost to convert DC to AC is much more expensive and you use a LOT more power to use a 1.5KWH PSU for a few GPUs (that's a huge understatement!)

Powering a bunch of ASIC Miners at only 1W per GH is not only more feasible but also uses DC so no conversion is necessary other than a cheap DC Regulator.

Not only is the turbine and solar panel a fraction of the Size and Cost, but there is no AC Conversion required which again is extremely expensive,  and the battery backup for times there is no wind or sun is absolutely nothing compared to what is needed to connect your entire home or business just to run a GPU Miner for 1-2GH at most!

We're just experimenting at this point anyways but it's just running a single circuit that only consumes DC power to begin with.

As for the pics, they were taken with permission by a colleague that is building our website. I never said it was "my data center"... Again, read and you'll see that the business is being run at the data center we work for. I'm a Network/RF Engineer and work out of one of the largest data centers in the Midwest.

See that makes no sense.
If you can provide renewable power for less then it costs to run it from the grid it doesn't matter how big your load is it would pay to run everything from it.  Especially when the cost per watt scales down the larger your setup is.

'Your' data center looks to be a bunch of random pictures you grabbed from the web

Sorry if I'm repeating something already said I'm on my phone and it's hard to read over everything...

Renewable energy is very expensive in most cases (such as a GPU Miner) however very easy to do with newer technology like ASIC and even FPGA. Our ASIC Mining Contracts will be using both wind and solar as a matter of fact. Completely off the grid we will have a small wind turbine during the windy winter months and a small solar panel during the summer months. What makes things even easier is that our ASIC Miners use just 5VDC and we'll be using a modified Android device rather than a PC to run the mining software, which also uses 5VDC! That means no DC/AC conversion is necessary and we'll be able to run for days on a few batteries. If for some reason either were to fail we are setup so that our equipment will fail back over to the main grid but we wanted to give this a try and so far successful but the real test will come after all the ASICs are attached.

In the case of a GPU Miner, even just a single home PC you would require a much larger setup that would cost tens of thousands of dollars! The batteries alone would cost more than you could make in a lifetime with a single rig. You would be surprised at the enormous size of the UPS it took to run one rig for just 15 minutes! Luckily our data center has both battery and generator backups for power failure!

We don't have any of the solar/wind details up yet until ASICs are tested but if you wanted to check out our business and/or ASIC Mining Contracts here is our site... We're offering Contracts at just 0.25 BTC that give you nearly 125MH and with careful reinvestment will yield over 1GH within a year! Highest yields of any available and we're staying 100% private and confidential so that no one gets screwed like GLBSE!

http://www.progressivebtcmining.com/

The glaciers and rivers of the interior of the country are harnessed to generate 80% of the country's electricity needs through hydropower, while the geothermal fields provide up to 20% of the country's electricity needs. These underground fields, which give tourists and locals their bathing pools, also provide Icelanders with an almost limitless and inexpensive supply of natural hot water.

There is no national grid in Iceland – harnessing the energy comes via the remarkably simple method of sticking a drill in the ground near one of the country's 600 hot spring areas, and using the steam that is released to turn the turbines and pump up water that is then piped to nearby settlements.

Geothermal water is used to heat around 90% of Iceland's homes, and keeps pavements and car parks snow-free in the winter. Hot water from the springs is cooled and pumped from boreholes that vary between 200 and 2,000m straight into the taps of nearby homes, negating the need for hot water heating. It's also purified and cooled to provide cold drinking water.

Wish we could all have it that nice

edit:
if you want the whole article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/22/renewableenergy.alternativeenergy

Power is rarely so cut in dry as a per country basis.  I can colo for 4 cents per kilowatt hour my home I pay like 7-8 but there a people in the same state as me that pay like 30....

And aluminum smelters don't go where they can get cheap electricity that's the old fashion way... they go to where they can get favorable economic deals and then build their own power plants

I've heard that energy costs in Iceland are dirt cheap and it is mostly renewable (hydro and geothermal). That's why all the aluminum smelters are there. I'm surprised that Iceland isn't a big BTC mining center.