Exploring Renewable Energy in BTC Mining A Calculation Overview

I think using renewable energy for BTC mining could really help the community bring back some decentralization in the mining scene. I've seen a lot of wild claims and some outright misconceptions about (PV-) mining in various threads here. So, I’m gonna try to put together a guide with a simple calculation. Let’s kick things off with a standard mining calculator, something like this one, which takes into account hashpower, power usage, pool fees, and energy prices. Sure, these calculators are pretty basic and tend to reflect the past or present more than the future, but we can still pull some general insights from them. The rewards are projected based on current data, but we definitely need to correct for the difficulty adjustments. Costs are closely tied to miner efficiency [J/TH] and electricity rates [$/kWh], so optimizing either one affects profitability similarly. The ratio of rewards to costs can give us a decent idea of how long a miner might be viable. Now, about the difficulty increases. If you look at the difficulty on a log scale, you’ll see that it’s been on a steady rise. There can be slight variations depending on the time frame you’re considering. Source Difficulty timestamps: 19.06.2015 -> 49.6924 G 19.10.2018 -> 7.1829 T 19.07.2021 -> 13.6726 T 19.06.2025 -> 126.4114 T Difficulty Development: 120 M: (126411.4 G / 49.6924 G)^(1/120) = 1.0675 -> +6.75% monthly increase in difficulty 80 M: (126.4114 T / 7.1829 T)^(1/80) = 1.0365 -> +3.65%

I don't understand how you are going to get electricity at a cost of $0.01/kWh? If I could get such a price for electricity, I would sell this electricity to miners for 4-5 cents and have a good profit

Already made all the calculations needed, everything has been said about it. It does not work. It won’t work. If it was possible, everybody would do it. Take a look around, do you see anybody running miners on solar or wind turbines and making any profits? Damn right there aren’t any. Because it is not fucking possible.

I can speak for my state of New Jersey in the USA 🇺🇸 depending on what year you installed a home solar grid tied system its cost is zero . that is for say a 22kwatt system which would let you run 1 s21xp for no power cost still have a little power left for the home to use for lights or what ever. but the outlay for that setup is about 30k which you get back as rebates over 7 years. 30% in year one and 10% a year for seven years. so there is a cost as you could have the 30k in the bank getting interest  so I would argue the 30k setup cost 3000 in lost interest. so if you buy a s21 xp for 7k add in 700 more in interest lost. this is 3700 for the system and 7000 for the miner. the miner makes 280x .05 =14 a day 500 days you earn 7000 in btc maybe maybe not.  the op neglected that btc grows in price. we know it grows in difficulty. so solar small scale can work or not. to make money mining some holding ends up being in the equation. at op you could argue that over a six year time period hold btc always works. I am pretty sure that the worse long was from nov 2017 to jan 2023 five years 2 months or dec 2017 to jan 2023 five years 1 months. to me the arguement would be every 6 year hodl made money so why do solar for 7 years plus (time for full government rebates) and if your gear breaks you lose out. at mindrust you are wrong, but it is not easy to do a big system.

$250 per kWp PV. ~1000kWh per year over 25 years. $250 / 25.000kWh = $0,01 /kWh. Renewables are cheap but fluctuating, utilization of PV-Only is just 10-20%. For more availability you need batteries and those invests increase the price per kWh again. No need to get upset, especially when you are wrong. Your view is backwards, but if you look forward it is just a question of time when i will work. Just look any random price development chart for PV and Batteries. The question is how close we are to this point, which adjusting screws do we have and did we pass that point already with some DIY effort?! Obvously you are right, that BTC price grow is not part of the calculation just because it would distort everything. To get the uncertainty out of the calculation BTC hodl is the benchmark, so you need to sell BTC (lets assume 1BTC = $100k) to buy mining equipment and energy and hopefully gets more sats back from mining. The core problem i see is not the price per kWh, it's the acquisition costs per TH. Mining Hardware manufacturer use their quasi monopoly to skim off the entire margin. To break the mining monopoly the community does not need to dig for gold they need to produce the shovels.

with quasi slave labor available in China beating the price does not happen. Mining is what it has become a small profit grind. BTW I still mine with a host. and make small amounts of income mostly because USa tax law allow me to write the gear price off. My credit is good and I carefully use credit cards to buy gear. Say I buy a S21 Xp on a cc cost of 7k I get 340 rebate from the cc cost is now 6660 I get 15 months to pay it zero interest so 444 a month to pay it off it earns just about 420 a month not counting power. So not counting power and never laying out any money or coin I own it outright in 15 months. power is 730 hours a month cost to run it is 185 a month.  so 15 x 185 is 2775 so it looks like I lose 2775 in 15 months. but  cost was 7k  power was 2.77k total is 9.77k make it 10k I can write off 10k and get about 3400 tax relief so in 15 months 3400-2775=625  wow only 665 but out of pocket was zero since it was on a cc So I made 665 in 15 months with zero outlay of course I can do around 10 units max this way. so in 15 months 6650 profit. but at this point the 10 units still earn and my bills drop to just power I net about 100 to 200 on each or 1000 to 2000 a month with no coin or cash laid out. Downside it is a fucking grind Downside gear will break Downside big bear season really hurts Do not do this is you can not afford to pay off the cc's of interest kills you.

Many people said the exact same thing in the past. They tried it and failed. You think you’ll accomplish something which nobody could before. Go on. Do it and prove me wrong. I’ll wait. You think I am mad, on the contrary, If you somehow do it successfully, I’ll be more than happy because you’ll teach me something new. If you fail, Not only you’ll lose money, these words will echo in your head for some time: “I told you so.”

Thanks for the answers. But we already discussed that 1 astkm requires a lot of additional equipment. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5545798.msg65483088#msg65483088 How much does 1 cubic meter of gas cost in the US? Maybe it is more profitable to use a gas generator?

Great overview on renewables and mining! There’s also a potential synergy with water — using waste heat from miners for low-temperature desalination. In some prototypes, we managed to produce potable water directly from miner coolant. It could be interesting for solar or wind-powered setups near the sea