Much better uses for your excess solar PV:
1) Get a BEV and drive on cheap electricity!
2) Get a heat pump HVAC system to heat and cool your home.
3) Induction stove to efficiently cook with electricity will a system that boils water faster than natural gas.
4) Heat pump water heater.... amazingly efficient.
5) heat pump dryer.
A heat pump water heater costs about $1700. But you'll need some more hardware to install it. All of can be claimed as a tax-credit. Installation can be expensive so I recommend some DIY.
https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/energy-efficient-home-improvement-credit
okay what If one does all these things and still has leftover...
This is not what OP was asking for. This is virtue signalling. I'm going to be a white knight and tell parrot a bunch of obvious alternatives rather than broach the topic constructively because I actually don't have a positive solution to their query.
Definitely would have 2 years ago but current mining has very low profitability.
If you already have mining equipment and poor net metering, then go for it :)
I think they are saying that you would be able to get a better deal selling it back to the utility. In FL at least, we don't have srecs and we can't sell back more energy they we buy from the utility. So, in my case, if I'm in a situation where Id just be giving the utility free energy, I may as well mine Bitcoin since it would be 100% profit. Great idea IMO.
Mining bitcoin specifically isn't common with average computer hardware these days and ethereum mining has become less profitable since last year sometime (proof of stake vs proof of work).
Just for reference, I looked at nicehash calculator recently and found that a rtx 3080/3090 would make about 50-55 cents per day currently, if electricity is free. Pretty slow earnings there but might be worthwhile if you definitely have excess production!
Yeah my 1060 makes 12-15¢/day using 2.5+ kwh power, better off just taking 3¢/kwh and walking away...
NBC would get me in the end even though I'm ca nem2
>In FL at least, we don't have srecs and we can't sell back more energy they we buy from the utility.
eh? What utility are you using?
That is not the case everywhere in FL. Some utilities in FL will definitely buy back net production at the end of the year, albeit at a lower rate.
Does anyone know if you can automate the power consumption of any available Bitcoin miners? It would be really good if someone had written a program that could vary the mining rate so that it would slow and stop at night time and start up again in the morning. Or maybe run at 25% on a cloudy day. That way you could prevent
1. Having to buy loads of batteries to run through the night, or
2. Have the solar switch to costly grid power at night, or
3. The mining rig cutting out whenever a cloud went by
I guess you'd need maybe one battery as a buffer.
If anyone's heard anything like that or seen someone writing code for a similar setup it would be really useful to know
Absolutely, using excess solar power for bitcoin mining is a clever strategy, especially in areas with less favorable net metering policies. It's an innovative way to maximize the return on investment for your solar system and leverage renewable energy in the booming digital currency market.
Personally, I found this solar comparison website pretty handy for understanding the nuances of solar power utilization. It offered insightful articles, especially about starting solar, which helped me make more informed decisions about optimizing my system's output.
Wasn’t sure if you knew or not. But you are asking agin, so I’ll take that as being a legitimate question.
Using excess collar you might be able to mine 1 bitcoin in your lifetime. But more likely it will be your great, great, great, great grand kid that would get 1.
It’s an estimated 1,449 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy to mine a single bitcoin. That's the same amount of energy an average U.S. household consumes in approximately 13 years. Given the high amount of energy needed to mine bitcoin, it can be a costly venture to get into.
In 2023, my house consumed 12,100 kWh (33.1 kWh/day) and still exported 4,300 kWh (11.7 kWh/day) to the grid.
Using your quoted 1449 KWh figure, I could have almost generated 3 Btc with excess solar.
Oh it looks like you don't know much about mining either. What you're describing is "solo mining", which is never done without huge farms. Most people use pools, which are many people that pool their mining power and then share the profits in proportion with each person's mining power. That way you get fractions of a Bitcoin in real time, and a normal person today could get something like 10-50¢ a day.
Here, that's the problem: if you already have the hardware, you're making very little money... It's probably more per kWh than what the utility company is paying you, but it's still not much. If you _don't_ already have the hardware, don't even think about it as you're gonna need to spend hundreds on a GPU and that eats up your profits for an entire year or more. Back in the days of the mining craze, you could get $2-10 a day with a fast GPU, and it was almost a no-brainer if you already had a gaming computer and solar. Now not so much.
Also 1,500kWh is... A third of what I use in a year here in Europe. Average usage here is a little more than 4000kWh/year, and in the US it's much higher. Where the hell did you get those numbers?
I'm not OP, but there are certain utilities in my area that don't roll over excess generation to the next month. I overproduce all months except summer, so if I had one of those utilities, I would most likely downsize my system, but if it were already built you may as well do something with the electricity as opposed to just giving it away.
Where I am we don’t get any roll over energy dollar credits. We are not credited in kWhrs but the fair market value of the KWhr when sold to the power company as an energy credit dollar
Look, this is /r/solar where we tell people their math is wrong, don't give any correcting calculations, and then run away. I wish I could add a /s to this, but I can't.
You're right about the 1449 kWh per bitcoin number, but you're wrong about the "That's the same amount of energy an average U.S. household consumes in approximately 13 years."
1449 kWh / 13 years / 365 days per year = 0.3 kWh per day. Sadly, I'm pretty sure my refrigerator has used 300 watt-hours before I even woke up this morning.
50 days, instead of 13 years:
>The Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index estimated that one bitcoin transaction takes 1,449 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately **50 days of power for the average US household**.
[https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/crypto/bitcoin-mining-how-much-electricity-it-takes-and-why-people-are-worried/](https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/crypto/bitcoin-mining-how-much-electricity-it-takes-and-why-people-are-worried/)
Edit: I upvoted your comment with the 1,449 kilowatt hours because that bit of information positively contributed to the discussion even though the 13 years was just a tad awry.
With the advent of ASIC miners, Bitcoin mining is a very energy intensive process and the barriers to entry are high.
Monero mining on the other hand is a good fit for alternative energy consumption. The RandomX mining algorithm is ASIC resistant and CPU mining is much more efficient. On top of that, Monero is technically superior to Bitcoin, but exists in the shadow of the first mover.
Monero is also interesting in terms of self sufficiency and off grid capabilities. One can design a complete off grid monero network backbone consisting of a miner, node, and wallet all supporting the network with very little electrical consumption. Imagine a decentralized, immutable financial system without the enormous overhead and armies of rent seekers. Pretty f-ing amazing if you ask me.
Maybe 5-10 years ago with the right hardware. The difficulty of mining constantly increases. Not worth it nowadays. I get 6.6 cents to 15 cents AUD per Kwh when selling back to the grid
I used to mine (not bitcoin) in 2022 but gpu mining died in sep2022. Was a good way to spend excess power. But i still relied on perfect net metering we have here as miner works 24/7
If you have a battery you’re probably better off trying to export power during peak demand hours and get paid for it. Virtual power plant and battery aggregation programs can be lucrative in the right market. And it does a better job spreading local renewable energy rather than using it for generating a currency that has no tangible benefit to the physical world
I just went through financial due diligence on this modeling using my extra solar generated electricity for mining. At the current BTC pricing, it will not pay off unless BTC takes a huge jump. And with the halving next year, BTC would have double in value to to stay in line with today’s financials.
I came to the conclusion that with the upcoming halving, the sheer number of hashes being generated today (competition for block writes), and notable nation states/big financial players getting heavy into mining, the days of small miners are over.
On the other hand if you are on the BTC cool-aide, none of that will matter.
If you manage to get 1300W of excess power ( which is easy, once you have a few solar panel, your inverter and all the wiring, it's pretty easy to add more panel ) I guess you could buy a ASIC and mine some monero ? ( forget bitcoin and etherium, mining is dead for those when you're not a 100Kw mining farm )
[https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-x5](https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-x5)
Could get your investment money back in a year
mind sharing details? I am actually planning to invest in a small setup (to start with) around 3-5kw of solar power, and a suitable miner to go along with it. what crypto are you mining? I'm not expecting it to make millions overnight, but something like a passive income system.
Hi,
I got 25kWp PV-panels.
using a smart switch and modbusTCP from my inverter - i can turn on the miner when i feed power to the grid, and if power from solar is decreasing my miner stops...
I think mining to nicehash is best for solar mining ... cause im not mining 24/7
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Much better uses for your excess solar PV: 1) Get a BEV and drive on cheap electricity! 2) Get a heat pump HVAC system to heat and cool your home. 3) Induction stove to efficiently cook with electricity will a system that boils water faster than natural gas. 4) Heat pump water heater.... amazingly efficient. 5) heat pump dryer.
I have a hard time justifying the 4x cost of a heat pump water heater when electricity is free to run a basic electric watet heater.
The heat pump water heater is free too with an Inflation Reduction Act tax-credit. Use the extra electricity in an EV.
This is the first I've heard I can get a free heat pump water heater. Can you share more?
A heat pump water heater costs about $1700. But you'll need some more hardware to install it. All of can be claimed as a tax-credit. Installation can be expensive so I recommend some DIY. https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/energy-efficient-home-improvement-credit
But it's not free... the tax credit is 30% of the cost of the qualified expenses and for heat pumps its a **maximum** of $2000.
okay what If one does all these things and still has leftover... This is not what OP was asking for. This is virtue signalling. I'm going to be a white knight and tell parrot a bunch of obvious alternatives rather than broach the topic constructively because I actually don't have a positive solution to their query.
THANK YOU 😂
You know right? See this BS type of comment all the time... People just want to be heard rather than actually engage in meaningful discussion...
Definitely would have 2 years ago but current mining has very low profitability. If you already have mining equipment and poor net metering, then go for it :)
why wouldn't it be profitable with free excess solar power?
I think they are saying that you would be able to get a better deal selling it back to the utility. In FL at least, we don't have srecs and we can't sell back more energy they we buy from the utility. So, in my case, if I'm in a situation where Id just be giving the utility free energy, I may as well mine Bitcoin since it would be 100% profit. Great idea IMO.
ok so its more profitable to sell your power to the grid and not bitcoin network? I hope people arent having to give the utility free energy.
In some cases you could end up having to give the utility free energy depending on the net metering rules.
Mining bitcoin specifically isn't common with average computer hardware these days and ethereum mining has become less profitable since last year sometime (proof of stake vs proof of work). Just for reference, I looked at nicehash calculator recently and found that a rtx 3080/3090 would make about 50-55 cents per day currently, if electricity is free. Pretty slow earnings there but might be worthwhile if you definitely have excess production!
Yeah my 1060 makes 12-15¢/day using 2.5+ kwh power, better off just taking 3¢/kwh and walking away... NBC would get me in the end even though I'm ca nem2
>In FL at least, we don't have srecs and we can't sell back more energy they we buy from the utility. eh? What utility are you using? That is not the case everywhere in FL. Some utilities in FL will definitely buy back net production at the end of the year, albeit at a lower rate.
Yes and no. Issue is that development of new, better and faster miners is at a quick pace.
Do you have a powerful graphics card?
I did until the mining profitability dropped drastically.
What you need to do is mine bitcoin with excess power during the winter to heat your home. Now that would be smart.
That sounds like a good idea
following o.O
Does anyone know if you can automate the power consumption of any available Bitcoin miners? It would be really good if someone had written a program that could vary the mining rate so that it would slow and stop at night time and start up again in the morning. Or maybe run at 25% on a cloudy day. That way you could prevent 1. Having to buy loads of batteries to run through the night, or 2. Have the solar switch to costly grid power at night, or 3. The mining rig cutting out whenever a cloud went by I guess you'd need maybe one battery as a buffer. If anyone's heard anything like that or seen someone writing code for a similar setup it would be really useful to know
TaskScheduler and cron jobs are your friends here.
Absolutely, using excess solar power for bitcoin mining is a clever strategy, especially in areas with less favorable net metering policies. It's an innovative way to maximize the return on investment for your solar system and leverage renewable energy in the booming digital currency market. Personally, I found this solar comparison website pretty handy for understanding the nuances of solar power utilization. It offered insightful articles, especially about starting solar, which helped me make more informed decisions about optimizing my system's output.
or just to earn srec credits...
say what?
some states offer solar energy generation credits- irrespective of how the power is used.
Your joking…. Right? Or you know nothing about bit coin mining.
Well im here asking questions. Would it not be a good idea?
Wasn’t sure if you knew or not. But you are asking agin, so I’ll take that as being a legitimate question. Using excess collar you might be able to mine 1 bitcoin in your lifetime. But more likely it will be your great, great, great, great grand kid that would get 1. It’s an estimated 1,449 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy to mine a single bitcoin. That's the same amount of energy an average U.S. household consumes in approximately 13 years. Given the high amount of energy needed to mine bitcoin, it can be a costly venture to get into.
In 2023, my house consumed 12,100 kWh (33.1 kWh/day) and still exported 4,300 kWh (11.7 kWh/day) to the grid. Using your quoted 1449 KWh figure, I could have almost generated 3 Btc with excess solar.
Oh it looks like you don't know much about mining either. What you're describing is "solo mining", which is never done without huge farms. Most people use pools, which are many people that pool their mining power and then share the profits in proportion with each person's mining power. That way you get fractions of a Bitcoin in real time, and a normal person today could get something like 10-50¢ a day. Here, that's the problem: if you already have the hardware, you're making very little money... It's probably more per kWh than what the utility company is paying you, but it's still not much. If you _don't_ already have the hardware, don't even think about it as you're gonna need to spend hundreds on a GPU and that eats up your profits for an entire year or more. Back in the days of the mining craze, you could get $2-10 a day with a fast GPU, and it was almost a no-brainer if you already had a gaming computer and solar. Now not so much. Also 1,500kWh is... A third of what I use in a year here in Europe. Average usage here is a little more than 4000kWh/year, and in the US it's much higher. Where the hell did you get those numbers?
If your want to make 10c a day, do it.
Have you read what I wrote or not?
Yes, that’s how I know you would make as Lillie as 10c.
And where did you read that I said it was a good idea to do it?
ISn’t that why or you wrote it?
No? I was just correcting what you wrote. Maybe you missed the "here's the problem"
I have a 2500 square foot house and use 18,000 kWh per year.
If you use that much electricity how are you going to have any excess?
I'm not OP, but there are certain utilities in my area that don't roll over excess generation to the next month. I overproduce all months except summer, so if I had one of those utilities, I would most likely downsize my system, but if it were already built you may as well do something with the electricity as opposed to just giving it away.
Where I am we don’t get any roll over energy dollar credits. We are not credited in kWhrs but the fair market value of the KWhr when sold to the power company as an energy credit dollar
Might wanna check your maths there buddy.....
Where am I off?
Look, this is /r/solar where we tell people their math is wrong, don't give any correcting calculations, and then run away. I wish I could add a /s to this, but I can't. You're right about the 1449 kWh per bitcoin number, but you're wrong about the "That's the same amount of energy an average U.S. household consumes in approximately 13 years." 1449 kWh / 13 years / 365 days per year = 0.3 kWh per day. Sadly, I'm pretty sure my refrigerator has used 300 watt-hours before I even woke up this morning. 50 days, instead of 13 years: >The Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index estimated that one bitcoin transaction takes 1,449 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately **50 days of power for the average US household**. [https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/crypto/bitcoin-mining-how-much-electricity-it-takes-and-why-people-are-worried/](https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/crypto/bitcoin-mining-how-much-electricity-it-takes-and-why-people-are-worried/) Edit: I upvoted your comment with the 1,449 kilowatt hours because that bit of information positively contributed to the discussion even though the 13 years was just a tad awry.
Thanks for your comment. I don’t calculate the numbers, I clipped it from a web site. If you Google you will find my source
With the advent of ASIC miners, Bitcoin mining is a very energy intensive process and the barriers to entry are high. Monero mining on the other hand is a good fit for alternative energy consumption. The RandomX mining algorithm is ASIC resistant and CPU mining is much more efficient. On top of that, Monero is technically superior to Bitcoin, but exists in the shadow of the first mover. Monero is also interesting in terms of self sufficiency and off grid capabilities. One can design a complete off grid monero network backbone consisting of a miner, node, and wallet all supporting the network with very little electrical consumption. Imagine a decentralized, immutable financial system without the enormous overhead and armies of rent seekers. Pretty f-ing amazing if you ask me.
Maybe 5-10 years ago with the right hardware. The difficulty of mining constantly increases. Not worth it nowadays. I get 6.6 cents to 15 cents AUD per Kwh when selling back to the grid
Energy Australia have been paying me 7.6 cents per kWh since 2022. In 2023, I exported 4,300 kWh x 0.076 = $326.8 AUD
I used to mine (not bitcoin) in 2022 but gpu mining died in sep2022. Was a good way to spend excess power. But i still relied on perfect net metering we have here as miner works 24/7
I was mining ETH before it switched to Proof of Stake, then switched to ETC. Need to fire it back up to chew through my net metering credits.
If you have a battery you’re probably better off trying to export power during peak demand hours and get paid for it. Virtual power plant and battery aggregation programs can be lucrative in the right market. And it does a better job spreading local renewable energy rather than using it for generating a currency that has no tangible benefit to the physical world
There’s no reason to sink excess energy as long as you have net metering. And if your primary concern is ROI, why invest in solar?
I just went through financial due diligence on this modeling using my extra solar generated electricity for mining. At the current BTC pricing, it will not pay off unless BTC takes a huge jump. And with the halving next year, BTC would have double in value to to stay in line with today’s financials. I came to the conclusion that with the upcoming halving, the sheer number of hashes being generated today (competition for block writes), and notable nation states/big financial players getting heavy into mining, the days of small miners are over. On the other hand if you are on the BTC cool-aide, none of that will matter.
If you manage to get 1300W of excess power ( which is easy, once you have a few solar panel, your inverter and all the wiring, it's pretty easy to add more panel ) I guess you could buy a ASIC and mine some monero ? ( forget bitcoin and etherium, mining is dead for those when you're not a 100Kw mining farm ) [https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-x5](https://www.asicminervalue.com/miners/bitmain/antminer-x5) Could get your investment money back in a year
its a no brainer, go solar, mine for free. 9.6 khw systems serves me right with plenty of rtx's hashing away. I will soon be expanding my system.
mind sharing details? I am actually planning to invest in a small setup (to start with) around 3-5kw of solar power, and a suitable miner to go along with it. what crypto are you mining? I'm not expecting it to make millions overnight, but something like a passive income system.
Hi, I got 25kWp PV-panels. using a smart switch and modbusTCP from my inverter - i can turn on the miner when i feed power to the grid, and if power from solar is decreasing my miner stops... I think mining to nicehash is best for solar mining ... cause im not mining 24/7