Solar systems not only pay off for the environment but also for your wallet: With targeted crypto mining and a little courage to take risks, you can amortize your investments within a few years – instead of the usual twelve to eighteen years (of course, it always depends on the current market situation. If the prices for the token are low, it will take longer, if the prices are rising, it will be faster).
In a recent proof of concept, I was able to prove that a solar system can be amortized within just two years through targeted crypto mining.
However, there are several hard-to-predict variables in the crypto mining space. They require you to consciously take risks. In addition, there are currently still no all-inclusive mining products that allow the use of this technology without in-depth IT expertise.
The biggest problem with private crypto mining is usually the high electricity costs. Of course, it always varies from region to region or state to state how high your electricity costs are. The average electricity price for a kilowatt-hour in the United States is between 10 – 18 cents.
That is of course quite a lot! Even if you only pay 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, you have to pay very high electricity costs for crypto mining.
Likewise, crypto mining is also not good for the environment as the power plants have to burn coal or gas to produce electricity (apart from nuclear power plants).
So how about if you produce the electricity for crypto mining yourself and thus protect the environment and also save on electricity costs…
In this article, I would like to describe to you exactly how you can produce your own electricity and earn money with crypto mining.
My principle is based on this:
- The sun is shining, my solar cells are producing electricity.
- I feed the energy to the mining rigs or ASIC miners. These are specially optimized computers for calculating hash values of certain cryptocurrencies.
- An intelligent controller directs this process automatically. This can also be supplemented with electricity prices and exchange rates.
- The rigs belong to a mining pool and produce cryptocurrencies (Ethereum, Bitcoin, Litecoin, etc).
- The mined amounts are automatically transferred to my wallet app.
- I can use these digital balances to shop online or wait for prices to rise (HODL).
This approach offers the following advantages:
- Save money: network surcharges, power peaks, and taxes currently make up 50 percent of the electricity price for small systems, and even 75 percent for large systems. With my system, they can be legally optimized or eliminated altogether.
- Automate processes: As a consumer, the money I have won or mined is automatically available to me within a day. You don’t have to do a manual transaction for this. The payout from the mining takes place daily and flows into a crypto wallet.
- Cushion exchange rate fluctuations: If I use this money regularly to buy goods or services, this event corresponds to an indexed exchange rate due to the daily payments. This in turn cushions the risk of high price fluctuations in the cryptocurrency. In addition, intermediaries such as banks or credit card companies are no longer necessary.
The better you calculate, the greater the courage to take risks
Anyone who wants to buy a solar system or has recently installed one quickly begins to calculate. It’s always about the same central question: When will the system pay for itself? After a few hours of Excel calculations using various tariffs, surcharges, federal and cantonal contributions, feedback tariffs, and assumptions about electricity production, I came to the following conclusion:
- The more electricity you use yourself, the faster the investment pays off.
- Feeding electricity back into the grid (often the largest share at 70 to 80 percent) is financially unattractive.
- Batteries as storage: Batteries can increase autonomy, but so can self-consumption.
What do you need to do for solar crypto mining?
Of course, if you want to do solar crypto mining, you first have to invest money. It also always depends on how many mining rigs or ASIC miners you want to operate.
The calculation is of course relatively simple, the more mining rigs or ASIC miners you want to operate, the more electricity you need. However, more electricity also means that you need more technology, you need more solar panels, more batteries, more power inverters, etc…
But first I would like to show you an example of how much solar power you have to produce to operate a GPU mining rig and an ASIC miner.
What you need to run a GPU mining rig with 6 graphics cards
If you want to run a single GPU mining rig with up to six graphics cards, the math is pretty simple.
If we assume that you operate a mining rig with six RX5700 graphics cards and these graphics cards with all other components, such as motherboard, fans, etc, consume about 1000watts per hour, of course, you have to generate these 1000watts per hour in order to be able to operate the mining rig.
This is of course quite easy. You buy a solar panel that produces 1000watts per hour, or several smaller solar panels that combine together to produce 1000watts per hour.
But what about at night? If the sun doesn’t shine, the mining rig still has to have electricity to be able to mine. You must therefore design your solar system in such a way that this solar system produces so much electricity during the day that enough electricity can be stored during the day to be able to supply the mining rig with the stored electricity at night.
1000w p/h * 24 hours = 24,000 watt p/day
So we need 24,000 watts or 24-kilowatt hours a day to operate the mining rig.
If we assume that we have 10 hours of sun per day, which supply our solar panels with sunlight, then with a 1000-watt solar panel we get 10,000 watts of usable energy.
That means that we are still missing 14,000 watts for the night. Therefore, it makes sense to set up two more 1000-watt solar panels that generate enough solar power during the day to store it in a battery.
So we need 3 1000watt solar panels for our GPU mining rig.
This is what you need to build a GPU mining rig:
- Frames
- Fan
- Motherboard
- Processor
- R.A.M.
- Power supply
- GPU risers
- Graphics cards
What is the return on investment (ROI)?
Of course, we also want to make a profit from mining. Therefore, we always have to be careful not to invest too much money! The main costs are of course the solar panels and the graphics cards. But the good thing is that the graphics cards always have a high resale value, so it always depends on your financial situation and how much you can invest in the graphics cards.
If the newer graphics cards are too expensive for you, you can also use older GPUs, such as the GTX1080 or RX580.
You can get used GPUs cheaply on eBay or Amazon, for example.
A complete mining rig with 6x RX580 costs about $1500.
The solar panels cost about 2200 dollars per 1kw. I prefer to buy solar panels at SolarShopUS. (Of course, the same applies, here again, the money is not lost, in an emergency you can of course sell the solar panels again). It can often also make sense to buy several smaller solar panels, as these are cheaper. Of course, this always depends on the space required or how much space you have available.
Now we need other “small parts” such as: Inverter, battery, charge controller and connection cable. I usually buy these parts at SolarShopUS. These cost then again amount to about 2000dollar.
Now that we have everything we need, we have an approximate investment of $10,100.
That sounds like a lot at first, but now we are able to do crypto mining completely free of charge. It always depends on the coin or token that we mine and also on the current price and the potential price development.
It is always very beneficial to buy hardware when the market is bad. When bitcoin falls, altcoins tank as well, which is the perfect time to start mining, as hardware will become cheaper and token prices will eventually rise again.
If you now earn about $5 a day with your mining rig, you would need a little over 2000 days to recoup your expenses. But what if the market suddenly becomes bullish again and prices rise extremely again? Then the market situation will of course change in a positive way for you and you can shorten the ROI time considerably.
So it always depends on how much money you have to invest!
How can the cost of power generation be further reduced?
Of course, it is possible to further reduce the cost of generating electricity. Have you ever heard of wind turbine generators? Wind turbines can produce far more electricity than solar panels. They are more efficient that solar panels!
Wind turbines also have the advantage that they also supply electricity at night when the sun is not shining. small wind turbines, however, need wind to produce electricity. So if you live in a windless place or in the city, wind turbines might not be an option for you… but if you live by the sea or in the countryside where there is always wind, a wind turbine might be perfect for you. because small wind turbines can produce much more electricity and are also much cheaper than solar panels.
Since the purchase prices for a small wind turbine are much lower, you will of course also achieve a faster return on investment. For example, a wind turbine that can produce up to 7kw (7000watts) costs only about $600. But you have to consider that the electricity production capacity always depends on the wind conditions. You can buy cheap wind turbines at SolarShopUS!
If you can operate the GPU mining rig with wind power, the investment costs are reduced enormously. One or at most two wind turbines are usually sufficient for a single GPU mining rig.
If you’re using wind energy, you only have an investment amount of about $2000. Of course, this is considerably cheaper than generating energy with solar panels!
However, you still have to factor in the cost of the energy storage. Batteries are usually a major cost factor. But the more wind energy you can produce and store, the more GPU mining rigs or ASIC miners you can operate. Wind generators are comparatively very cheap and can produce a lot of green electricity for crypto mining.
Wind turbines and ASIC miner
If you have enough space, you should buy several wind turbine generator and store the generated electricity in batteries. The more power you can store, the more mining rigs or ASIC miners you can use to produce passive income.
But if you live in a place that is ideal for generating electricity with wind power, you should also consider setting up as many wind turbines as possible and then mining Bitcoin or other tokens with ASIC miners.
ASIC miners usually require more energy but also generate more money as these ASIC miners are optimized for crypto mining.
For example, to operate a Bitmain Antminer L7 24 hours a day for free, you ideally only need one wind generator. This way you can quickly get the money back for the investment in green energy!
With free electricity that you produce from renewable energies, you don’t have to pay any money for the storm. So you can fully use the income to finance the solar or wind energy equipment.
Which battery types do you need?
There are various technical solutions on the market. The best known are lithium-ion batteries. The main advantages of lithium batteries are the high level of efficiency, the high energy density and the comparatively long service life, even with intensive use. The storage capacity can be used almost completely in continuous operation without the battery suffering as a result. Lithium-ion battery technology has become established in home storage systems in recent years. This technology is also used in other fields of application, such as in electric cars and in large battery storage systems in industry and in power plants. As a result, prices have also fallen in recent years due to the further increase in production figures and constant technical development.
Here you get the best batteries to store green energy.
Although they play practically no role on the market, two battery technologies are occasionally touted: the redox flow battery and the so-called salt water battery. While some providers of home storage systems with redox flow technology have withdrawn from the market, saltwater batteries can actually be bought. Unlike compact lithium batteries, these consist primarily of non-flammable liquids and, due to their low energy density, require much more space and weight. Disadvantages are the lower power output, higher losses and the open question of the expected service life. A higher level of safety (no fire hazard) and very good environmental friendliness are promised as advantages.
The lead-acid batteries used years ago no longer play a role in renewable energy storage. These batteries have proven to be unsuitable because they require regular maintenance and care and only achieve a significantly shorter service life.
Cryptocurrency prices can fluctuate significantly
On the other hand, in the medium term, some major cryptocurrencies will turn away from mining and towards other block validation methods. Or protocol adjustments are implemented that make mining less lucrative.
In addition, there is the risk of price development: prices of cryptocurrencies can fluctuate considerably – which quickly makes mining unprofitable or has the exact opposite effect. Fluctuations in electricity prices and the weather are also difficult to predict and cannot be ignored.
The procurement of suitable hardware is currently difficult, as this is out of stock worldwide due to the current crypto boom. The cost of hardware investments varies enormously. That is why you should check these and the associated write-offs on a case-by-case basis.
Conclusion
Crypto mining is a great way to generate passive income. Due to rising energy costs, however, this passive income is becoming smaller and smaller. With a solar system or wind turbine generator you are not dependent on your local energy supplier as you produce your own electricity.
No matter how you mine cryptocurrency, with GPU mining rigs or ASIC miners. Cheap or free electricity is the key to success.
Investing in a wind turbine or solar system can quickly pay for itself. It is important that you choose the right type of energy production.
Wind power has the advantage that the systems are very efficient and can produce a lot of electricity.
Solar panels have the advantage that they are very easy to install.
If you have enough space and live in a windy place, you should definitely bet on wind energy.