I'm toying with the idea of using a Bitcoin miner to heat water (for domestic use) with excess electricity from a PV installation. The goal is definitely to just use it when heat is needed and spare electricity is available, and not to run it always. I'm not trying to maximise mining profit, but just do a fun project that has some useful purpose, too, but obviously I don't want to just burn a lot of money.
I can take care of all the control aspects easily, but I'm trying to determine whether or not there is suitable mining hardware available at all. Basically I would need a miner with these properties:
- low power, 500-1000W intake
- can be watercooled easily (I'm not too much of a hardware tinkerer, so fitting some pre-made watercooler onto the board is the most I can do)
- cost in the $500-$2000 max range
- does not need to be the most efficient available, but obviously if it only makes $10 a year, there's no point
Does anything like this exist? I've seen that there are watercooling solutions for S19's, but they draw a bit more power than I want to give it based on my estimates.
The problem here would be your power range, so you will need to disable 2 boards and keep only one, with those S19s removing two hashboards leave you at slightly below 900w, with whatsminers set on low you can get a single board down to 800w range.
Of course this makes the cost per th a lot higher, and on average you arr going to get 30-35th out of those new gen miners, so anywhere between 1.7$ to 2$ a day.
You can check my miners sale topic for price refferences to see if the project is worth it, also water blocks cost between 100-200$ for the new gen miners like M30s and S19s.
The downside of your project is the limit of power, if you can ramp it up to 2000w it would make a lot more sense.