Recently I’ve had a new Solar Panel system installed at my house and I’m trying to figure out the best way to utilise the energy generated. Ideally I’d like to have an off-grid battery system as my motives for installing it are more about building resiliency in the face of supply disruptions. However, at the moment the economics for the batteries is just not there so I’m looking at options for how to use my surplus solar energy in the interim.
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To explain in a bit more detail, below is a chart of the energy produced by my panel system on a fairly typical sunny day in the Australian Autumn. As you can see, with 18.81 Kilowatt Hours generated it’s pretty decent, but the majority of the energy generated is between the hours of about 10am to 3pm.
Now if you have a look at our actual energy usage on the same day you can see that in the middle of the day when it’s warm and the wife and kids are out and about, our usage during this time is low. It’s in the evening where we are now pulling energy back off the grid.
This wouldn’t irk me so much except that we are getting paid 8 cents per kWH for solar energy fed into the grid and we’re paying 27 cents per kWH for the same energy we pull back down from the grid later that day. It’s a hell of a spread which I reckon is bordering on outright rort, so surely there is a good way for me to use that daytime surplus energy. It effectively has a much lower cost basis of 8 cents per kWH….which in US dollars is 5.4 cents per kWH.
I had given up on mining crypto years ago because with ASICs going the way they have been and the electricity price in Australia getting silly, this country has been pretty much totally uneconomical for crypto miners and we have practically ZERO crypto mining industry here as a result. However I’ve been wondering if I might be able to get something viable at this cheaper electricity cost since the bar for solar fed back into the grid is pretty low.
Source
After digging around a bit, it seems like one of the most profitable coins to mine at the moment is DOGE – a coin I am not a huge fan of, but I understand that you can do Merge Mining with Scrypt to mine both DOGE and LTC at the same time. Seems like it could be a funky idea. Of course my ROI on an investment in an Antminer L7 is likely to be a lot longer if I am only running it for maybe 4 hours a day but with a 3.425 kW power consumption it looks about the right size to soak up my surplus energy and give me a better return.
Anyone out there still mining crypto at home? Anyone using solar energy surplus to power it? Anyone got a better idea for how to use my surplus energy? If so, throw a comment below. I'm open to all ideas and nothing is off the table!
I've thought about this. Would be nice to have a if this then that automation to enable GPU mining when power being exported is > x; and to turn it off again when the sun vanishes behind a cloud.
FiT are such a rort, it sucks. A home battery might be a safer bet. Sure the sums don't add up now, but when power prices are gonna increase 20% year on year probably for the next billion years, it makes their pay off tend to look far more attractive.
I'd much rather get a car that supports vehicle to grid - with a two way charger (not to be confused with vehicle to load) - a vehicle to grid car plugs into a smart charger that does bi-directional charging. When the sun isn't shining, you draw from the car's battery to power the home. When the car is shining, you put stuff back into the car battery instead of to the grid.
Unfortuantely, there's only 3 cars that are available in Australia that support this, and the bidirectional chargers cost $10k.
The three cars are also particularly unattractive from a value standpoint
The value proposition here is better, because you get a battery on wheels. The cost of a Nissan leaf on its own is pretty comparable to the cost of getting an equivalent sized battery installed, and the way I see it, you get a free car along the way.
The only problem is that the grid operators don't seem to be prepared for vehicle to grid all that much either... and you have to go get approval from the energy regulator in your state on a case by case basis to get a 2 way charger approved for use.
I think there's one in South Australia.
Enough rambling on this topic for me, though
It's a good point. If we do get energy disruption and severe inflation of electricity then not only will batteries become more viable, but the demand will likely explode. Still, I can't really afford to bite the bullet just at the moment. An 18 kWH battery system would probably cost in the vicinity of $20K at the moment.
I had thought about doing something funky with an electric car too, but there is another big expense there and not a huge value in having a car if its got to sit at home every day to charge off the panels.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments mate. Much appreciated.
There's some useful tables out there (on solar quotes) that show the $/kwH as far as a battery is concerned. Some of them are almost on par with residential electricity rates, which makes it appealing, if you look at it from the sense of "prepaying" your energy imports over the next x years.
Unfortunately, you've still got to contend with the "supply" fee daily, as a lot of these systems won't work off grid
Bugs, you lost me at solar, then it got worse when you used solor and minning together. Very intresting though. Man its good to read a post by you. I see you still doing a hell of a job with the bot and community. When I think of SSG (which is a lot lately) you are the 1st that comes to mind. All these new faces have No idea what you have done and the extra Miles you go without thought. I dont think I can kick a post out daily, but I diffently think I am back this time. Damn good to see you brother.
Thanks for the kind words mate. I am a bit more active in Discord these days so most of the new members know who I am and what I do. What they don't know is the massive part you played building this community in the first place. To me and many others you will always be the godfather of SGS so it's great to have you back mate.
Australian Government should rethink their policy for mining. The government itself could involve in the mining and can generate some money for the welfare of the people living in the country. They can use the energy they are getting for 8 cents for mining. I think you should go for dodge mining if it's profitable for you.
The power grid here may be better than some countries, but it is still a total joke. We could put in enough solar panels "in the outback" and generate more power than the entire nation needs, spin up manufacturing and industry, industrial foundries and do high tech manufacturing.
Instead ,we throw all our resources on a boat and let other nations get wealthy from them.
That's not good for the nation. The governament should do something about it.
That's a funny joke. The government does nothing for its citizens :D
That's the reality, we are suffering from the same situation, But why the people vote for these kind of people again and again to bring them in power?
Too many levels of government, too much nepotism, too much corruption. I'd "love" to be a politician campaigning on a platform of pragmatism and actually governing based on "data" and "best outcomes", with no bullshit; but people have no appetite (or attention span) to take into consideration all variables to arrive at a balanced decision.
IF this is the situation happening in every country, happening at every level, who will correct it? who will take a stand against all this? My country is on the edge of getting default because of this corrupt politicians !
My roof in the Netherlands is wrong direction. Not even east west set up will bring me much due to other roof's shade. BUT the roof I have in Spain now is getting similar sun hours as you are showing. With a pool pump running all day this would be great to cover costs. Tbc...
I can't imagine a pool pump will draw much. Sunny Spain would be great for solar but I reckon you'll have the same issue as me figuring out how best to use your surplus.
My roof here in Australia is terrible for solar, but you can get microinverters, where each panel basically works as its own little generator, instead of a number of panels needing to work together to get enough voltage to drive the inverter and generate power.
I regret not getting solar sooner.
Latest panels are cheaper and generate ~400 Max Watt. Soon we will have negative energy prices on sunny windy days here. Occured already a couple of times but with solarpanels doubling in 2022 (NL) it will be more often,
We've had negative energy prices on the "market" in South Australia throughout summer (a combination of wind, and solar) - but the retailers of energy charge us all the same :)
So it's allowed to steal from you but not you from them? How on earth are you only getting back 8c for a kwh but you're paying 27c? That seems a bit ludicrous😂
Well now that you've mentioned it, I stopped mining after the ETH fork but perhaps I should give it a look over with DOGE and LTC?
This is how Australia does it. We do lots of dumb stuff like this.
See my above comments, haha :D
I think at this point mining is dead for the small guy, unless you literally have free electricity (one way or the other). From a "marketing" standpoint, mining is again dead, these days airdrops or presales are the preferred method of distribution.
Yeah, I know not answering your questions just sharing some thoughts
That's pretty much how I've been seeing it. Would love to be wrong though!
I was using a pool for a while. I stopped because I upgraded my hardware and the return was so small. I was using NiceHash. I actually saw an article the other day and was talking to someone else about how a large portion of the energy used to mine BTC these days is renewable.
Yes, there are other countries doing funky things with energy to mine crypto. Hydro is a smart one because it's often cold areas with low ambient temps so can also save on cooling. They are even looking to power from Volcanoes in El Salvador.
Not much innovation here in Australia though unfortunately.
Hey, I hear you. The US used to be one of the innovation capitals of the world. Not so much anymore...
One of my buddies just did an off the grid solar system with the silver cell batteries. He said it will take him 4-5 years to recuperate the cost but after that he’s good for life.
Sounds good. Not sure how long batteries last though. Don't know much about silver cell batteries but most of the stuff I've seen you'd be lucky to get 10 years out of them so you need a relatively short payoff.
The silver cell batteries are the same ones used in Teslas. If you run them in series instead of just using one or two only the life expectancy is between 15-25 years depending on if you do the yearly maintenance they recommend. My buddies house needs just over one battery at full charge for a days usage. He has four batteries. Uses three hooked up, every six months he is going to rotate a battery out. If the batteries last him 12 years he will have saved himself 25K in electric bills. He was paying almost $400 a month for electricity.
:) oh cool! i like DOGE. I use that as my tranfer coin of choice since the fees are so low and it's a very popular coin too, so it's offered at most exchanges. yea, that sounds like an interesting option to try and put the extra energy to use..
That is one of the challenges with solar power, what to do with all that extra power during peak time, even batteries top up quickly - it'll be interesting to see if the mining works for ya.
We are seeing the way Australia is doing it and in the last few days another country has come Bhutan which has been doing it for a long time and it is a very good thing that the owner also needs it for this country. Because all the time they have is for the same thing.
From what I have heard here, it means that you are paying more than you are getting...
How is that?
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My technical understanding is not good enough to do mining myself but I really like what you trying to do with „solar-mining“. That‘s the way! Clean Energy Form the sun transformed into digital property.
Greetings from Germany to Down Under! 🇦🇺
Thomas
PS: Know what you mean with DOGE but well, although it is a Meme Coin it is a Top10 one too.
When I was in my hostel, I used to mine with Nicehash website, although the returns were very low but I was enjoying that thing. Now it is almost impossible to mine at home.