Farming and electricity

Farming and Plotting
1

I am considering returning to farming. I still have all the kit…a few PCs, a couple of gtx 1060 and an rtx 4060, plus some lesser pro cards, about half a petabyte of disks and the blockchain machine which is off/a year out of date.
I am thinking some sort of off grid solar could make it viable but would have to homebrew to make worthwhile.
Thoughts anyone?

2

Probably not worth it to restart now.
Note that solar has HIGH up-front costs for the gear, it is NOT “free electric” but at best “sunk costs”.

CNI has still not come up with a viable use case that will make the coin profitable for the long run, just a couple of small niche uses that don’t seem to be affecting the price OTHER THAN when they are announced.

3

Are your drives still plotted? What’s your electricity rate?

Check out XCH.farm | Chia Farming Earning Calculator to see if it makes sense to farm in your specific scenario.

1 Like
4

I lose $1.50 per day if I pay for electric but if electric was free I make $1.30 a day
So a solar micro grid tie inverter is $60 and a panel is maybe $100.
It seems like it would make no profit (due to night)

5

So you could farm during the day only, unless you need the small amount of heat, which is what I use to keep my office nicely at around 18-20 deg.C, even in the depths of winter.

If anything, summer time is where I will switch off (as I did in 2024, for a month or two…) as the heat became unmanageable.

6

So the best the community can offer is :
Happen to have $10000 of used disk, have free electric and make a couple of dollars per day?

Edit duh mistake converting $ to £.
$5000 of used disks.

7

Not worth doing it, unless you have free electric or you need the heat anyway.

To get free electric, more money needs to be spent. You’d be surpised what you’d need to maintain your farm - what is the overall consumption ? 300-400W ? 24/7 ?

Assuming 350W, you’d need 8.4kW per day to support it. Getting that, day and night, all year round (depending on your latitude and weather conditions) will need a not insignificant solar and battery system to maintain it. I’d wager your estimate of “a solar micro grid tie inverter is $60 and a panel is maybe $100” could easily be multiplied by 15-20 to get anywhere near. So another $2400 ?

Also a bit optimistic. Exchange rate varies but typical rule of thumb I use is 1.25. $10,000 is about £7,900.