RE: Winter is Coming -Thoughts & Tips
LOL, well from some of the mining setups I have seen, you literally can heat your house or room with them !
In general most things that consume electricity will shed some of the power as heat energy, when spaces are designed they do in fact take into account that "waste" heat, and the heat from PEOPLE, we are great butter burners !
Personally, I have not seen a mining setup that cost less to run than what value they mine. Almost like a perpetual motion machine. This may change with better equipment and the intel new in memory stuff which name escapes me at the moment.
If I were to do mining, I would hang solar panels, batteries and inverters enough to power the equipment banks
then it's plausible that you could mine enough value, of course you have to consider the cost/benefit vs Time and lifetime of equip, but IMHO it's probably do-able if one is careful and pays attention to the details, in any event it's going to be significant up front costs...
This would be a great gift for granny to keep her little home warm.
Winter a couple years ago I did move one antminer S3 out of our I.T. room and into a storage room that had no AC vent, It kept the whole space warm. I have the solar parts in my garage you mentioned as part of our hurricane backup system and would never recommend investing into solar for mining unless the parts you purchase serve as a dual purpose such in my case. If you were to deploy cells though you could use a grid tie inverter to feed/offset current consumption. We have that as well yet It's stored also instead of used because I want everything in 100% condition If we lose our grid for several weeks like what happened to us years ago.
Well, IMHO, this may not be practical for an individual for mining/solar setup, however , a group of people/investors with some in-house knowledge of solar setup could probably do it.
I run my home equipment off repurposed UPS as the inverters and deep cycle batteries.
Granted the runtime of your average ups is 30 minutes max because of heat, I have run it fine for days -although I wouldn't leave it unattended nor sleep by it LOL
again, with the solar it depends on what your local public utilities commission/state has set up for solar paybacks, some places have net metering which means the most you get is a ZERO $ bill and thank-you for the rest free, some places give you more for your excess generated, so that IS a factor in consideration.
In general though, you CAN run just about ANY setup off-grid, and as you said it is a matter of cost of the power equipment, the long term output, the mining equipment vs. the value mined. it could work out though at least on paper.
Doing it turnkey aka throw money at a setup as an investment ?
I see a NICHE here for all you mining experimenters to put something real together.
http://www.ibtimes.com/intel-reveals-its-plan-blockchain-technology-sawtooth-lake-distributed-ledger-2350599
they have a recently named term for the latest processor if I remember right it begins with a Q or a C, I saw it once should have bookmarked it, it's a merge of blockchain CPU and some new in-memory tech that should revolutionize things, Intel govts, banks etc are competing to get huge advances in blockchain processing, as Steemit has proven it's not just for just a bitcoin variant, it is MUCH MORE.
if they create tech for it, look for mining to be far more efficient as far as processing TIME goes. We're gonna need keys that have quadrillion places LMAO...
Unless you live somewhere where they pay substantial $ per KW for selling power back to your local power company solar is still not currently a profitable return on investment strategy.
Don't get me wrong, I love solar and wind generation and have played around with both for many years while teaching my kids about it. Setting up a mining farm would be easy breezy for me and man I wish it would be cost effective to do so. We have plenty of land and plenty of sun here in Florida.
On a side note I was going to ask my son if he wants to mount all his gridseed orbs without the cooling fans attached into an environmental housing and I'll throw it up on a 12ft steel pool with a couple of our panels, a deep cycle battery, solar/wind controller and his raspberry pi(the head) for shits and giggles. I just need to keep it within range of the wireless house router. The only thing we don't have in stock is the pole and the housing which I've bought before online for $350-$400 for a good size one with 2 temp controlled fans. It will most likely never ROI back the housing and pole cost but would be a good little father/son 3 hour project.
Totally Agree with you on cost effectiveness, almost ALL the alternative energy sources are a boondoggle, with payback vs investment exceeding the nominal expected lifetime of the Equipment, then tack on the high cost of installation if you are tying into the grid, it just doesn't cut it.
99% of the "success" stories we hear about have huge govt subsidies to make the numbers work.
That said, on a personal level, and like I will outline in coming posts, the key is having options that you have invested in. Like your hurricane setup that supports SOME loads but not something you can totally live off of. Alternatively, taking SOME of the expensive or little household loads off grid such as yard lighting, entertainment electronics, interior lighting and moving them to something like the tesla powerwall could reduce your bills. Note I said LIKE a powerwall, you could get a refurb EV battery on Ebay for less and hang an inverter and PV on that for a lot less IMHO.
buying "used" but still good PV panels from those discouraged folks who are cashing it out could lower costs, mix and match just to get watts flowing kinda deal, can work too.
Not sure what gridseed orbs are will have to look them up, but a decent Pole alternative could be a Chainlink fence top-rail, can get at fencing places and home depot from 6' to 48' lengths, they have a thicker wall to support the fence. and do the flag pole thing, 2 posts on either side of your pole, with a bottom bolt "hinge" and one or two higher bolts to lock it in place, can make it EZ to erect. if you go high guy it and with anchors and tension turnbuckles... I like to goop outdoor silicone on any nuts etc that I want to move in the future, the silicone protects from rust, and is easily peeled off when you want to unscrew the bolt...
it's like heating systems up north here. I see people taking out perfectly good heating systems because that last winter fuel prices went thru the roof. When you actually should put a second system that uses a different fuel, and it's fuel tanks, that way you have options for heat and consume the fuel you have or when one or the other is cheap. IE OIL & Propane.
Mix a woodstove in there and a cord or two of wood, and you have three alternatives to get ya thru the winter without breaking the bank, it's rare that over the course of a year or two that ALL the fuel is sky-high in cost.
That's my thinking about solar, Wind, generators, and human/animal powered generators feeding a bank of batteries that support SOME or emergency or essential household loads, it's all about the OPTIONS. !
it's when they try to impose ONE or the other as a monopoly and on a collective town, state, region, level that the alternatives break down.
The last thing they want is the individual to have their own options and choices about it, and that is exactly what it called for. Individual solutions.
If they were serious about a national program, research into Fusion on a NASA space program to the moon- scale could solve it, then it could be scaled from massive to household... voila energy crisis solved.
If we can go to the moon/mars there is no reason why we can't solve fusion !
this thread should be a post in itself LOL