32 sats \ 12 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 10 Sep \ on: Mining Bitcoin Off-grid on an EXTREME budget bitcoin_Mining
Beautiful setup- similar style to mine but yours has much higher mining ability.
I have just 4x300 watt panels running one 1TH/s miner 24/7!
Most of my electric is used to keep the fridge and lights on.
The Lifepo4 batteries are amazing and I hope they last as long as is claimed.
Now I am learning more about miners may look at developing more hashrate as you are doing where you just operate when the sun shines and using older lower cost miners.
Good to know you are getting some sats income every day you operate!
Inspirational!
Thats so cool it runs all the time. How much battery do you have?
reply
Someone informed me that cycling the miners can be more harmful than letting the run 24/7. But it would take a ton of solar and battery for me to do that.
reply
Yes the cost of batteries would make 24/7 solar completely uneconomic but IMO the way you have done it makes perfect sense - it will be interesting to see how much if at all the repeated heating and cooling of circuits shortens the miners lifespan.
Surely having them working some of the time is far better than not at all, and using 100% solar means zero cost input.
I also see you run your miners at lower than maximum allowed speeds so that may compensate for the switching off and on as surely thermal damage is greater near the limits of hashrate capacity.
reply
I hope so. I was unaware before this post that cycling them causes degradation. I do what I can. Maybe one day I will have the resources to expand my solar and battery setup and run them all the time. I have the land.
reply
I have one 24v 110ah Lifepo4 plus 100ah lead acid (2x12v in series)
The Lifepo4 holds the charge much better than the lead acid and should last much longer.
Until last year only had lead acid batteries and they gradually lose capacity over 5-6 years so hoping the Lifepo4 lasts as long as the manufacturers claim. Some of the Chinese Lifepo4 manufacturers were claiming higher capacity than is true and there are varying quality of the cells and circuits used to make the Lifepo4s but if you get a good Lifepo4 it should be good for 10, 15 maybe 20 years?
But yes as I am running 24/7 can only have a very small miner.
Am now thinking after seeing your setup I want to get at least one bigger miner to have running in summer when I have a lot of surplus solar that the batteries cannot soak up.
It does not matter too much if the miner is an older less efficient model if its cheap enough to buy it can still utilise the solar power that would otherwise not be used.
Seems like theres probably a lot of older miners going quite cheap that are not economic to use ongrid but might still be good for offgrid when the sun shine use.
reply
Is the lifepo and lead acid together in a series? if so that lead acid is probably holding the other back.. They have very different charging curves. I think good Lifepo4 can easily last 10 years. But mixing chemistries isnt great for them.
reply
No I have the Lifepo4 as one circuit and the lead acid as a completely separate circuit.
They both have 2 of the 4 300 watt PVs powering them.
So they are standalone systems. Yes Lifepo4 and lead acid would not mix well in one circuit.
The lead acid circuit powers a large 5000w inverter I use for power tools and backup in case the Lifepo4 circuit ever fails while the Lifepo4 circuit/battery powers 3000watt inverter which feeds the fridge and lights and laptop etc.
This is because Im not as sure off the Lifepo4 handling heavy current loads as the lead acid...but the Lifepo4 is better with constant moderate loads and holding charge over night.
reply
Oh cool. That makes more sense. So are you offgrid completely?
reply
Yes.
reply
Some lifepo4 can start cars now. I do know they arent as good at large motor current draws though
reply
Yes the 110 ah lifepo4 is spose to be ok up to 100amp draw but the skilsaw motor probably draws a bit more than that when its starting up and working hard so safer to use the lead acid battery for that.
reply
In my experience most of these. Batteries will push more amps than they are rated for, no problem.
reply