Using Solar Power for Miners Off the Grid

I’ve been digging around and noticed there aren’t many recent discussions about successfully using solar or off-grid setups for miners. I'm curious if anyone has better tips for managing when to turn miners on and off. Right now, I’m just using timers to switch the miners off and on, but that feels pretty clunky for managing energy use. Initially, I thought just turning off the router would make the miner go dormant, but that was a bust it keeps running at full power. Is anyone out there using custom firmware to control miners? I’d love any advice you might have. My mining rig includes 2 S9s and a modified S19 Hydro, all together churning out around 140TH, powered by my off-grid electrical system that runs my shed and barn. I’ve got plenty of power left over for tools, so I could easily add a few more miners and just shut some down if I need juice elsewhere. Connecting the shed and barn to the grid was gonna cost a fortune, so I went for an off-grid solution instead. I pieced this system together with new and used components. I’ve got 40 panels at 250w each (that’s 10Kw) running through two Growatt inverters (10KW) feeding into 280 AHr 48v LifePo4 batteries. I’ve ordered more batteries, but the shipping is slow.

You can turn off your miners using apps on smartphone like hiveOS application or through the browser, I do this a lot without getting closer to my mining rigs. If you off your router the miner will still keep running but with less power consumption compared to when the miner is fully working with the internet connection. I prefer having extra juice available when mining with solar panels so that my battery bank can also recharge fully for night use, I hope you have some calculator? I am not sure that running 2 S9 and 1 S19 with extra asic miners on a 10kw is a good idea. I might be wrong but you should do some calculations first.

Tesla is currently running a special of which I was just notified. Those using referrals to purchase a Tesla solar system are currently eligible to receive double the reward credits, which can be used for things like discounts on Tesla products or free supercharging. If interested or you’d like a referral code, feel free to reach out to me, as I was given referral codes when installing my Tesla Powerwall for my house.

My optimum result would be for an Automated turn on/off by time/r option in firmware - will check if HiveOS can help. I have just test loaded DJayOS into an S9 as the old stock firmware was running the unit a bit hot and causing lots of reboots on the hot days.  I now have the S9J under clocked running at a reliable 10TH at around 1KW for our 10 hours of daylight.  The S19 runs at 3K3 watts so in total I have 5300 watts of miners running and accessories(fans/pumps) using only 250W.  So I don't have  an issue is running 6000 watts on a 10,000 watt system. I feel I can squeeze 2Kw more out of the system as the panels still fully charge the batteries by 10 am. More panels and inverters are planned if I can find them cheap enough.

The more load you add to your solar energy build the longer your battery bank takes to fully charge, also you should know that it won't always be a sunny day, there are rainy seasons as well, make sure you have enough power left to charge your battery bank per day while mining with all the rigs at the same time. My solar battery bank started misbehaving when I add to much load, I meant the battery bank wasnt lasting as it supposed to until I remove a rig, extra power is very important, for buffering sake and keeping the full battery at full.

I fancied doing this from my campervan. A bigger problem for me would be the internet connection. I could use public WiFi, or tether through my 'phone, but I suspect that these nay be unreliable unless they were monitored frequently.

I don't know why but my opinion is maybe the reason only a few people that successfully run miners using Solar is because the Solar panel still very expensive for running multiple miners and when the night comes you need a battery or keep using on-grid electric. Solar panel is for investment in the long-run and most people still okay with on-grid electricity. In my country, there is a dedicated modem that connects to local provide so its like Phone Tethering but I thinks is more reliable

What about bitcoin mining in outer space?  Could you piggyback mining software on communication satellite computers?  Or maybe get Richard Branson to launch a communication satellite filled with ASICs for bitcoin mining.  Plenty of solar energy to run computers.  No cooling problem, either.  What would need to be the minimum price of a bitcoin to make it cost effective to operate a satellite for bitcoin mining?  Satellites already communicate internet traffic.

... miners have a habit of not working at negative temperatures ...

I use a decentralized setup: Some few solar panels at remote locations on my land. A Raspberry with GSM-connection powering between one and four Gekko-miners. When there's sun, they are mining. No sun, use of battery. Battery empty: No mining. They mine on startup and can also remotely be controlled either via ssh or with the terminal of the GSM-provider. Additionally, there are some miners working in a shed, powered by the excess energy of one roof.  They just run constantly. At the moment, I set up a roof with solar-tiles and a 15 kW battery. Under the building is a huge cave system where I will store the miners (in an experimental stadium, they worked perfectly. They are connected to my network through an LTE-bridge through which I can ssh into each miner individually.

You can use a raspi with an LTE-hat which gives enough connectivity for a small miner.

First thing that comes to my mind: Use a PDU which you can access via ssh. It is a bit brute, but should work.

I have just found an old blog about using Linux cron jobs to kill running processes, Now all I need to do is figure out what processes to kill to put the miner to sleep and I have a neater way to stop and start the miner.  Hopefully that also reduces the power usage. regards