Post
Topic
Board Mining speculation
Topic OP
Mining and Solar Electricity
by
ManagingPrime
on 02/04/2014, 20:00:57 UTC
Hi.  I need some experienced mining folks to give me some feedback.  I work for one of the largest residential solar installers in Arizona and we are also in California.  Our cash payment customers are getting their electricity between $0.04 and $0.06/kWh.  There's been a trend in solar to "oversize" systems by 20-30%.  By this i mean, if a customer is using 10,000 kWh/yr they may purchase a system that's generating between 12,000 and 13,000 kWh/yr.  Personally, I don't like to oversize systems because the "extra" electricity is sold back to the utility company at the end of the year at "wholesale" rates (read: less than what they are paying for the electricity).  It occurred to me that bitcoin mining may be a great way to go for some of these homeowners.  For example:  Over the course of a year the PV system overproduces 2,000 kWh of electricity.  As opposed to selling that electricity back to the utility company at say $0.04/kWh it may be better to drop off a "bit coin rig" at the customers house that's capable of using up the extra 2,000 kWh in the course of say a week.

Questions:
Is it feasible to install a rig of that size at someones home?
How many coins would it likely mint?
From your experience mining bitcoins would profit sharing with the home owner be preferable to say $0.07/ kWh?
Considering hardware costs, is this even a worthwhile endeavor?