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Topic: Who here in the Pacific shut off their rigs this week? (Read 156 times)

hero member
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1000
We had plenty of Juice in the PNW, power really wasn't a problem.
But some people here have under sized hvac since the weather usually isn't that crazy, at most we have a few 100f days.
In that case the units simply don't keep up, we got up to 77f inside but our 2 1/2 ton hvac is severely undersized for this house.

My miners have lots of breathing room, so I kept them on  Cool
legendary
Activity: 3444
Merit: 1061
I don't have 240V at my place unless I decide I don't need a stove or a dryer. So its possible for me to switch back and forth between the dryer/mining rigs but just going to be too much of a hassle. Most small miners don't have access to 240V either if they are in the USA or Canada.

So if there is browning and you got a switching PSU you are safe I guess however most small miners only have access to 120V and if the voltage goes down to 90V most miners will be screwed.

Can you imagine buying tons and tons of $1000 GPUs only to have a bunch of them fry due to blackouts and browning surges? I wonder if you can RMA a card like that? I heard that sometimes the power company can compensate some of the cost, basically maybe a computer or two. However don't know if the power company would pay to replace $10000's of mining GPUs. Will probably just tell you to claim it on the insurance but insurance won't cover it because most home miners don't have supplemental coverage for mining equipment.

So the end of the story is. If there is about to be a blackout, just turn off your rigs and don't risk it.

access to buy a 100kva 240v (or whatever) is easy..what i don't know if your electric company will install it/allow you to use it or not.

if successful get a 10kva(or whatever is needed) 220v to 110v transformer.

locate the breakers that are in the areas that are designated as 110v (dining room/laundry area/bedroom)...and tap a 220v line to the transformer and make another breaker box (110v)--tap the building wires that are for the existing sockets/area that are to be used as 110v.

easy peasy.

or having both 220v and 110v line from the electric company, both having separate watt meter, can be an option too.
legendary
Activity: 3808
Merit: 1723
I don't have 240V at my place unless I decide I don't need a stove or a dryer. So its possible for me to switch back and forth between the dryer/mining rigs but just going to be too much of a hassle. Most small miners don't have access to 240V either if they are in the USA or Canada.

So if there is browning and you got a switching PSU you are safe I guess however most small miners only have access to 120V and if the voltage goes down to 90V most miners will be screwed.

Can you imagine buying tons and tons of $1000 GPUs only to have a bunch of them fry due to blackouts and browning surges? I wonder if you can RMA a card like that? I heard that sometimes the power company can compensate some of the cost, basically maybe a computer or two. However don't know if the power company would pay to replace $10000's of mining GPUs. Will probably just tell you to claim it on the insurance but insurance won't cover it because most home miners don't have supplemental coverage for mining equipment.

So the end of the story is. If there is about to be a blackout, just turn off your rigs and don't risk it.
legendary
Activity: 3444
Merit: 1061
In 2014 there is a place where i mined and the voltage drop to around 190v...the bedroom ac compressor is turnning off due to low voltage and the mining rigs are still fine, it is written at the back of psu 110-240v..so a 220v mining are far superior to 110v mining.

220v is always better, less money spent on cables because less amps through, although same current. You need to have a psu which has auto voltage 89v to 250v in case of brownouts or other things, need to be careful though, in a 110v or lower is double or more the amps, so you need to watch out, could burn your whole house because of it. The safest route is to have a voltage monitor, in case the voltage drops below 220v, it tells you, so you can do something about it till it gets back to 220v or higher a bit, when I lived in London, voltage used to go as high as 280v, used to be normal around that.

here is the potential of those who have 110v, they already have x2 the thickness of the wire. if they could buy and let the electric company install a 220v transformer. now they have thick wires and a 220v. basically if that facility is currently at 10,000 watts at 110v, at 220v that facility can now do 20,000watts.
legendary
Activity: 4256
Merit: 8551
'The right to privacy matters'
Yeah you are correct. If there was a blackout there might of been something called browning which I heard is killer for many computer components. Browning is when there is power but the voltage is not where it should be. So instead of 120Volts AC you might get 90Volts AC and what will happen is all your components will compensate and will need to pull more current and it'll end up blowing up a bunch of capacitors and other vital components.

Maybe with a surge protector it might save your equipment however a regular mid/high end PSU might not be able to kill the power in time to prevent the damage. I wonder if any miners on here ever ran into this "browning" type of electrical failure and ended up having most of their farm destroyed as a result of it.

I have this issue with my btc asics.

Not my gpus.

Here is why.

My gpus almost all run on 240 volt power and use Seasonic Focus Atx psu’s

My main location gives 238 volts and browns out to 190 volts often.

so a atx that can run on 120 volts up to 240 volts has zero issues as long as you are at 50%. say 500 of 1000 watts.

but my server psus for the btc asics at designed to do 205 to 250 volts.

they will run at 195 volts but they can die. Mostly just the psu dies.

USA 🇺🇸 NJ we had 98  97 98 and I downclocked all my asics and had zero issues.

We had major t-storms last night. Temps are now 72 f.
member
Activity: 93
Merit: 41
I always run my rigs off of servo-type voltage regulators, this way any variations in the AC line voltage is regulated back to the nominal value via the regulator's buck-boost transformer before input into the PSUs.
sr. member
Activity: 2142
Merit: 353
Xtreme Monster
In 2014 there is a place where i mined and the voltage drop to around 190v...the bedroom ac compressor is turnning off due to low voltage and the mining rigs are still fine, it is written at the back of psu 110-240v..so a 220v mining are far superior to 110v mining.

220v is always better, less money spent on cables because less amps through, although same current. You need to have a psu which has auto voltage 89v to 250v in case of brownouts or other things, need to be careful though, in a 110v or lower is double or more the amps, so you need to watch out, could burn your whole house because of it. The safest route is to have a voltage monitor, in case the voltage drops below 220v, it tells you, so you can do something about it till it gets back to 220v or higher a bit, when I lived in London, voltage used to go as high as 280v, used to be normal around that.
legendary
Activity: 3444
Merit: 1061
Reason good brand tier 1 psus are the most important thing in your mining rig, those brownouts are dangerous even if you have a tier 1 psu, must have --> 89v to 250v auto voltage stabilizers, i guess all tier 1 psus have that.

In 2014 there is a place where i mined and the voltage drop to around 190v...the bedroom ac compressor is turnning off due to low voltage and the mining rigs are still fine, it is written at the back of psu 110-240v..so a 220v mining are far superior to 110v mining.
sr. member
Activity: 2142
Merit: 353
Xtreme Monster
Reason good brand tier 1 psus are the most important thing in your mining rig, those brownouts are dangerous even if you have a tier 1 psu, must have --> 89v to 250v auto voltage stabilizers, i guess all tier 1 psus have that.
legendary
Activity: 3808
Merit: 1723
Yeah you are correct. If there was a blackout there might of been something called browning which I heard is killer for many computer components. Browning is when there is power but the voltage is not where it should be. So instead of 120Volts AC you might get 90Volts AC and what will happen is all your components will compensate and will need to pull more current and it'll end up blowing up a bunch of capacitors and other vital components.

Maybe with a surge protector it might save your equipment however a regular mid/high end PSU might not be able to kill the power in time to prevent the damage. I wonder if any miners on here ever ran into this "browning" type of electrical failure and ended up having most of their farm destroyed as a result of it.
sr. member
Activity: 2142
Merit: 353
Xtreme Monster
You did the right thing in having turned off your rigs because there are times turning them off is better than to let them on and then that load could have damaged long term the lifespan of those gpus or other things.

People or miners in Canada are not used to that extreme heat, in Lytton, average temperature of that region is expected to be around 21c this month, so 50c is more than 2x, soon temperatures will go back to normal and then you can turn it on again, better be safe than sorry.
legendary
Activity: 3808
Merit: 1723
Don't know if most of you heard but in the Pacific we had the worse heatwave ever. Records were shattered one after another. Canada's old temperature record was beaten consecutively at a small town in BC called Lytton BC. It almost reached 50C at one point, I think the actual number was like 49.5C. And yesterday due to the extreme heat the entire town ended up burning to the ground due to forrest fires. Hundreds of people dead in BC due to heatstroke and everything.

South of the border it isn't better for states like Washington either. Air conditioners can't keep up and people can't buy refrigerated meat or perishables. Air conditioners were sold out long ago, and a few days later basic fans were sold out in most stores. Where grass was bright green now is mostly brown and dried up.

I shut off my rigs way before this because I didn't want to deal with the heat. Hopefully most miners did the same. Not just due to the annoying heat but there were reports of electrical companies about to run out of electricity due to the huge load. So it was wise and considerated to just shut down rigs so not to overload the network and cause blackouts for everyone.
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