This probably depends on the particular mining pool, but would there be any negative consequences for a miner if it works 10 hours, then goes offline for 10 hours and so on? At the end of the month would it get about 50% of the Bitcoins it would have gotten if it worked non-stop? Or in other words, would the 10h on / 10h off be the same as if it worked 15 days and was off 15 days during a given month?
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383 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 17 Aug
You're paid on reward divided by hash rate in a pool, by being offline half the time you're effectively halving your hash rate but also halving your power consumption
... But you're also losing depreciation on the hardware, every hour it's not mining is another hour newer and better chips are devaluing your chip.
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160 sats \ 1 reply \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 17 Aug
The type of pool payout scheme will affect your results here. PPLNS - your payout could vary based on when the pool finds a block. FPPS- it should average out
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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 17 Aug
I miss PPLNS
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @m0wer 17 Aug
What you need to consider here is the cost of capital and the time to paying off the original investment.
For solar setups where you have excess energy during the day but mining is not profitable from the grid at night, the strategy is to get lower efficiency miners like S19s for cheap so that they pay off earlier. Having new generation models like an S21 or future S23 for running only half the time is probably a bad investment.
If you give more details on the situation we might come up with some ideas. But for your current question, mining half of the time gives you half of the rewards, half of the electricity consumption and full hardware depreciation/opportunity cost.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @anon 18 Aug
Yes, it will be an off-grid solar setup with batteries that keep the miner running during the night.
The electricity produced in June is about 6 times more than the electricity produced in December. So, there are two extremes:
A. Miner that is powerful (and expensive) enough to utilize the June energy. It will work on/off during the winter, waiting for the batteries to be charged. A downside is that money have been spent for a miner which is not utilized 100%, is not working 24/7/365.
B. Get a less powerful miner (cheaper) that can work non-stop even in December (100% utilization all through the year). Then there will be an excess energy in the summer. So, a downside is that money have been spent for solar panels which are not utilized 100% through the year (their energy is wasted in the summer, or at least not used for mining).
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @m0wer 18 Aug
How much is the electricity cost from the grid approximately?
Ideas:
- Sell excess energy back to the grid. The electricity company might offer you a “virtual battery” where they keep a balance of excess power and let you consume a fraction of it at night or during other months. You can still install batteries for the day/night balancing and use this resource only for moving energy from summer to winter.
- Have an hybrid approach with some efficient miners for constant use and some less efficient ones for peaks during daylight and summer.
- Tweak the miners frequency to underclock them for slightly better efficiency and adapting to the solar production dynamically.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 18 Aug
About 50% higher from the profitability threshold. E.g. if profitability requires less than 0.10 price, then the current price is about 0.15.
I would like to avoid that as it would require involving the grid operator with tons of paperwork and they would buy it at a ridiculously low price.
Hmm, I will look at the numbers and will consider that. Thanks for the idea.
There are also some miners that support changing the power, e.g. mine at P watts, 1.5xP and 2xP watts. They surely cost as a "2xP watts" miner. In the winter it would be possible to reduce the power, but that wouldn't change much: lets say it waits 3 days for the battery to charge, then it starts and if it mines at 2xP it will drain the battery for 10 hours, if it mines at P then it will drain the battery for 20 hours. Then wait 3 days again for the battery to fill up. I think it wouldn't make any difference whether it works for 10 hours at full power or 20 hours at half power.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @m0wer 18 Aug
Then it might be the case that it's not a good idea, if your main motivation is to do it as an investment.
Solar is great as a complement but not as the only source. Even with batteries you won't be able to preserve energy for the winter. And the batteries cost and wear can be significant even if only for the nights.
This might be interesting for you as well: https://smokinghopium.io/
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Zion 17 Aug
I never mined, I'm basically the wrong person for this but I feel it will affect it
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