My Solar Powered Bitcoin Mining Setup
OK so since powering bitcoin miners currently costs more than the return (at least in the UK), i have invested some of my lovely Bitcoins into solar panels and batteries...
Here we have approx 440x 18650 lithium battery cells, which were recovered from scrap laptop battery packs. I configured them into 7 series 21 - 29.4 volt packs x3, which equates to a roundabout 3KWH of usable battery storage. I used 8mm solar bus bar and 3 amp fuse wire on every cell to create the packs...
Here we have my solar chargers, each charger (green ones) has 1x 250 watt solar panel connected to it...
This all then connects to a modified UPS which acts as my terribly inefficient 24 volt inverter, which then powers an Antminer S3...
Eventually I want to power my entire house with solar power, but this will only come with time, for now though I'm loving the fact I can mine for a few hours per day (6-8 hours on a sunny day) entirely for free....
lol, can't believe i did'nt see this post sooner! desperately need to have some kind of filtering thing setup, i think i start making some custom rss feeds again!
I was still a very new comer to steemit when I published this, The system is still going strong but has evolved slightly since. :)
I will do an up to date write up soon. :D
WOW!! This is seriously the coolest thing I've seen today. You are incredibly creative! Have you seen the new Solar City roofs? They are stronger than regular roofs and very pleasant to look at.
Thank you, I thought id share my little hobbyist project , hopefully I can inspire other miners to follow suit. I don't think I've seen anything to do with solar city roofs as yet, but its now on my "to look out for" list :)
You can find more info on Solar City's Website. This is Elon Musk's company.
Thank you very much, I will have a look later on :)
Nice :)
There are some currencies you can earn a good return with using GPU mining at present.
My best GPU is currently an R9 270x 2GB, I suspect that card has had its day in all honesty, but if you know better please let me know :)
I think I'm earning $1 a day with an older card mining Zcoin if I have my sums right, and that's at 30c/kWh. The sudden ascension in prices has made mining profitable for now.
https://zcash.flypool.org/miners/t1W1pBsaXuSoKddGuLbPkotprsz5awAsVPH
Thank you very much, i shall certainly look into it further :)
I'd be interested to hear how you go :)
Well i threw the R9 270 into an old machine and pointed it at nicehash, seems to be earning 60k - 70k sat per day if i run it constantly, just waiting on the batteries topping off before i move it over to the solar system as it has to be using less power than the antminer s3 uses :)
Great :)
I've not heard of nice hash before, looks interesting.
Not sure what SAT is either as Google won't tell me. I've bought another one card on eBay so will see how nice hash works when it arrives.
Will it earn more than your antminer? I had a prospero x1 but it was blown up in a storm so I'm out of mining Bitcoin.
Cheers, Mike.
haha nicehash is basically a miner hiring site, you point your rig at their service and they hire it out and you get paid in bitcoin or fractions of which we call satoshi (sat) after they take a fee of course. As for earning more than the antminer, ohh yes 3x the mining income on 2 thirds of the electricity too so thats always a bonus.
Prospero x1 i still have a pile of those laying around, these days they are only really good as heaters im afraid. curious as to which card you bought though, decent cards have all been snapped up :/
great idea,
How much the hall setup cost you ?
The cost was quite high in all honesty, but I funded the project with bitcoins that I mined at a good profit margin, technically the entire project owes me nothing more than time. However I spent in fiat terms about £200 on scrap laptop batteries, + £300 for solar panels, then a further £75 on the chargers, approx £100 on cable, and approx £150 on ancillary's such as the plastic cell holders, bus bar, fuse wire, individual chargers for the individual cells, I also built a load of arduino controlled dischargers to measure cell capacity. It's 1 hell of a hobby but like most its also expensive.
This is a pretty cool homemade rig. I have actually been looking into the idea of setting up coin farms on Solar myself. Here in the US we have commercial suppliers of whole house systems that would be more economical (and safer) than a homemade rig. You might want to look into whether that's available in the UK?
haha sounds even more expensive than DIY that does mate, luckily for me I'm a qualified electrician so its all good, I know my wiring isn't the tidiest but look at all the mechanics driving cars that don't look fit to be on the roads. The ready to go systems will be good for those amongst us who are not comfortable playing with electricity, but id expect them to have a big markup which is only really good if you have deep pockets, I'd love to see a review of one of those setups if you have a youtube vid you can point me at please?
I don't yet, but I can certainly look around. I've been toying with options myself after seeing a tutorial from Lumbridge [dead link] I thought "hey I live in SoCal, I should capitalize on seeing how this would run on a solar rig"
the link doesn't show me anything mate, i don't know why but I've only just seen this comment :/
Well it seems as though the original source has vanished. Sorry about that. It was basically a description of how to use an inexpensive board, SSD, and risers to run 6 AMD R9390 GPU's as one mining rig.
Sounds like good reading matter, if you come across a working link for it please let me know.
I have no idea why but I'm not getting notifications of your replies, will have to keep checking my reply tab more often me thinks :)
reply notifications have been buggy since HF19, I just look for new replies every 15 minutes or so of my "active" day
It isn't quite the same thing, but someone created a pretty good rig setup tutorial here:
https://steemit.com/ethereum/@spybit/how-to-build-a-gpu-mining-rig-cryptocurrency-ltc-eth-etc-xmr-zec-and-many-more
I, personally, would bump the PSU to 1600w and favor an AMD Ryzen setup; using the parts in my wishlist;
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/26BLXY2M83LHS/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_2
But everyone has a personal preference ...
I have been wanting to play with solar for awhile, great use and this was entertaining post!
it can be good fun mate, but rest assured if you choose to go with lithium batteries, it will cost you a fortune. If you do decide to get into solar power, your perfectly welcome to use me as part of your knowledge base :)
very impressive!
thank you :)