mining with solar power and batteries

Hey everyone, I’ve got a 16.9kwp solar setup that I got through some incentives. Right now, I’m only making about 1500 euros a year from selling electricity, plus some more from production incentives. I’m considering switching my selling electricity to something else since I still get 3kw even on cloudy winter days and around 90-100kw during the summer with all this sun and nice weather. I also bought a 6kw hybrid inverter and 10kwh solar batteries a year ago, planning to use it as a backup if the grid goes down. But honestly, I haven't needed it at all, so it's just sitting in my garage unused. Now, I'm thinking about adding a few more panels and using this second solar system to make some extra cash. Here’s my question: Does it make sense to get into bitcoin mining with all this free electricity in 2024 and beyond? I don't mind spending on some pricey ASIC machines, but is it really a safe investment? From what I’ve read here, mining seems like a gamble. Is that accurate? Thanks!

It has been discussed many times before. Batteries are not suitable for this task. no First of all that's not free elecrticity. You paid upfront. That's not free. no You will most likely end up in a loss. yes New hardware gets added to the network every day. You are making profits today maybe but unless bitcoin's price keeps climbing every day, or you add more machines, or other people stop adding new machines to their farms; your profitability will be gone before you get your ROI. Yw Just keep selling electricity and be happy with that. Less headaches, more profits. Mining is a loser's game.

thank you for your clear answer, i got it right from all the posts that it is too late for mining by the way all solar systems were free by the state incentives and produce money for 20years 5-10x your investment (investment repaid by 4-5 years) plus selling electricity for as long as it works. you are actually right maybe adding more panels for the other inverter to sell electricity makes more money than mining here in europe

Mining is a business, it does get influenced by factors you can't predict and risks that would look akin to gambling but it's the same for all businesses, a profitable coffee shop could go bankrupt just with the city redesigning the roads and crossing there. Now the math: You get on average 5 euros a day and let's say 50 kwh production, it means you get aid back something at 10cents/kwh? If that's accurate then I don't see any reason to mine, one of the newest gear will burn 84kwh a day, so 8.4 euros and gain $11.35 and no, you don't have the capacity to make it run all day long every day, so... really no point in the numbers are accurate.

Your bottleneck is the batteries. https://m.bitmain.com/product/detail?pid=00020240718151523125gE0aB5Es065D An average Antminer will be consuming ~5.4kwh and your batteries have 10kwh capacity. It will be gone in 2 hours if you run just one miner and then you'll need to pump more than 5kwh every hour to that system so the miner can continue to work. You might add more solar panels to succeed that but the battery will go bad because it can get recharged only a few thousand times. If it is a LFP battery it can be recharged more than 10k times but mind that, you will be fully recharging the batter every 2 hours so 1 cycle will be gone every 2 hours. 12 cycles a day, ~4.5k cycles a year... The battery will die in less than 2 years. If it is a lithium ion battery pack it won't take a year before it dies. Miners are power hungry and batteries don't have the capacity and lifetime to feed them properly. Mining on solar is a bad investment.

Your best bet is to sell electricity and buy bitcoin with the money you earn. Yes, you are still gambling on the price of BTC increasing, but you have much better odds compared to mining.

definitely better odds, thank you all for your help

I've tried it and it doesn't favour me. I ended up killing my battery backup very fast and I was just lucky to solve some solo blocks on other coins and convert them back to BTC, now I've changed the batteries because they can't even keep up anymore. The only miners I can run on battery backups now are small USB miners and BTC solo miners that takes between 30watts to 100watts max, better sell electricity back to the grid like you've been advised and find other ways to start buying Bitcoin. Asic miners are too power hungry, bad for solar batteries, you can look into ETC miners if you still insists, then convert the coins back to BTC, there are ETC miners that use 500-600watts and they are profitable, DYOR.

They are just "batteries", but anyway, batteries are best used for backup and not your average intended use, most batteries have about 1500-3000 cycles at 50% depth of discharge, and then at >50% it just gets worse (it is not linear) So if you discharge a very good battery 50% everyday, you would expect 8-10 years, in practice, it is a lot less, because those figures are based on perfect condtions like a constant environment temperature of 20c which only exists in a specialised laboratory. So ya, batteries are expensive and are not intended for massive usage, usually, when you do cycle cost, you will find it is a lot cheaper to buy on grid power.

If you wanted to mine for fun and solo mine as a gamble, your best bet is to find something that uses very little power. I have a few BitAxe's that use 15W each that run fine on a much smaller system than yours (currently 1.4kW solar / 2.4kWh battery storage). But like others have said, miners nowadays that pump out 50Th/s+ use a hell of a lot of power (2kW-3kW+) and you won't make more profit than selling back to the grid. There's a few bitcoin mining calculators online that will give you a rough idea on profit/loss.

Cool idea man, like, im not sure about the returns you’ll get but the plan to use solar power for your own personal mining sounds good. If you’re planning to do so keep us posted, good luck!

".......Mining on solar is a bad investment......" Mining on solar energy is not a bad investment. I have never mine with electricity nor solar energy but, i know that  if, this folk set up his panel properly, get a good storage battery that is capable of supply energy to a full or quarter zone. He will surely make profit from his investment. In solar energy, we have batteries and we have battery. Unfortunately, choosing the right battery is one the most challenging task. Lithium batteries takes a longer time to recharge during winter. The normal piombo car batteries work well during  winter but,you can easily lose energy that has been  accumulated in this type of batteries. Regards Chucks

Sure, you can run ASIC machines, but Bitcoin mining depends on fluctuating prices and network difficulty, so it’s risky. Even with free electricity, the machines need maintenance and can get outdated. It could work if you’re cool with some risk and long-term investment, but if you want something steadier, selling extra power to the grid might be a safer bet.

I was thinking this thread is about mining in the Solar System, so I thought this is about having a blockchain on Mars etc...  Great discussion though! Many users are mining and using excess heat for heating purposes, then the whole calculation changes a bit ...

You could solo mine to help with decentralization. The Avalon Nano 3's pack a punch (4Th/s) and use about 125Watts. You could buy a few of these and have them solo mine on your generated power whilst still exporting to the grid. That way you have a possibility of finding a block which is worth a fair bit, whilst also earning from your export. It's a win win IMHO.

Not sure solo mining with this setup would be beneficial... even at 20TH you would have 683 years between blocks, according to solochance.org

A lot of people are buying small miners now just for this. It's of course a lottery. There was a single BitAxe that found a block back in July with only 500Gh/s. https://cointelegraph.com/news/tiny-500gh-home-bitcoin-mining-device-produced-a-block-earning-over-200k-btc

Interesting. They could have bought a real lottery ticket instead. Why waste time and resources on mining if all they want is a lottery ticket? Playing in a casino is a better idea too. It is hassle free and still luck based. Again, the shovel sellers are making the real money here while the adventurers dream on getting rich but we are all gamblers in the end. Some of us are just smarter and know math better than the rest.

Some people just want to run something to potentially hit the jackpot. It helps with decentralisation too instead of letting the large pools have the monopoly over the network. You'll spend more buying lottery tickets than you will buying a miner like a BitAxe or the Avalon Nano 3. Plus the odds are way better mining solo. For instance, the odds of winning the lottery here in the UK is about 1 in 15-30 million depending on which lottery you play. Mining with 6.5Th/s is about 1 in 756k daily.

Mining with solar can be profitable but to me the only chance you would have is DIY'ing everything. Batteries are getting relatively cheap and so are panels. But to get any sort of system is going to be a hefty investment and the breakeven period would be years. Assuming you don't have any natural disasters the solar system should last ~ 20 years so you would have time to make $$$, or maybe $. Unfortunately for me I seem to have the reverse Midas touch, any time I touch a miner it seems turn to poo.