What to do with extra power?

[EA6LE-ONE]

Now that is cooler I have some more spare power and I was was thinking what to do with it. As I cannot sell it back to the power company I decided to rebuild couple old servers and commission them to crunch numbers for BOINC projects https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

I chose the project https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ you can join here if you wish: https://join.worldcommunitygrid.org?recruiterId=1133543

We could create a new team if more are willing to join. Computing power generated by solar power :)

I was thinking for bitcoin or other platform to sell computing power but the money yield is not worth it. Better donate for science than try to make some a###s rich.

What other ideas you have to use the extra power you generate if you don't sell to grid?

[Mike Curran]

Plug in your EV, if you have one. If not, it's time!!!

[EA6LE-ONE]

I am a truck guy. just got an hybrid Ram 1500. An improvement over the old one but still using a lot of gas. EVs should have the top with solar cells and they can recharge anywhere. not sure why is not implemented yet.

[sbrownian]

Pumped storage, if you have a place to put some water up a hill...

[Mike Curran]

I am a truck guy. just got an hybrid Ram 1500. An improvement over the old one but still using a lot of gas. EVs should have the top with solar cells and they can recharge anywhere. not sure why is not implemented yet.

Have you ordered your Cybertruck yet? I just Googled Turks & Caicos and Provo is only 23 × 4 miles - you wouldn't have to recharge much so maybe my solution isn't the best for your excess energy.

[EA6LE-ONE]

"Pumped storage, if you have a place to put some water up a hill..."

not an option here and the investment too high to justify. still extra power just stored in another form. that will work only if you have the space and don't want batteries. the efficiency is low.

[EA6LE-ONE]

I am a truck guy. just got an hybrid Ram 1500. An improvement over the old one but still using a lot of gas. EVs should have the top with solar cells and they can recharge anywhere. not sure why is not implemented yet.

Have you ordered your Cybertruck yet? I just Googled Turks & Caicos and Provo is only 23 × 4 miles - you wouldn't have to recharge much so maybe my solution isn't the best for your excess energy.

I use like 25 gallons ($125) a month here. so not worth the difference to cybertruck :) and still a 5.7L 4x truck will not be beat by the EVs

[sbrownian]

"Pumped storage, if you have a place to put some water up a hill..."

not an option here and the investment too high to justify. still extra power just stored in another form. that will work only if you have the space and don't want batteries. the efficiency is low.

Right, but if the power is 'free'...

Just a thought.

It would actually be 'do-able' on the system that I'm messing with, but when you have a spot that you can gain 200' altitude in about a 600' run, it does make a difference.. (8000' mountain behind the site. The owner has land that reaches about 300' in elevation gain at the top of their parcel..)

I'm also thinking fire suppression. It would be nice to have 10,000 gallons or so at over 80 psi to squirt on trees and such..

[Mike Curran]

Talk about pumped storage!

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles ... n=GTMDaily

[Dforster]

Pumped storage, if you have a place to put some water up a hill...

Good idea! I’ve thought about doing that. And running a hydro gen on the way down when needed.

[JRHill]

What other ideas you have to use the extra power you generate if you don't sell to grid?

I've thought about this for quite some time. I only have excess power in the summer months. Whatever I do it has to be a seasonal application. But for the summer I would build out the solar as I still have roof space. I would love an EV that had sufficient ground clearance to get here and back down the trail. The products aren't there yet. And I had to update a 22 year old pickup in December. I now have a new F350 FWD (I didn't need a F350 but I had to factory order it to get the small V8 with the 10 speed - F150/F250 didn't have the configuration option. I like it). Locking rear axle. It's a tough rig/tank with MANUAL roll up windows and manual door locks. NO INTERNET as its mostly not available here anyway.

But it seems to be where you are located. For me I have to do gasoline. Don't ya love 12 mpg? This rig will pull about anything. I could care less 90% of the time. Then there are the times that I have to pull. This thing can pull down a hillside.

I still can't figure out the ultimate off grid rig. It seems to be where you are located and your utilities to pump it up.

[Mike Curran]

I would love an EV that had sufficient ground clearance to get here and back down the trail. The products aren't there yet.

Both the Tesla Cybertruck and the GMC Hummer (https://www.motortrend.com/news/gmc-hum ... omparison/) will have suspensions that allow adjusting ground clearance, and both can be ordered with plenty of power. Both are beasts in the high dollar trims. Only drawbacks are high price and Jim, where do you fuel up in the winter?

[JRHill]

Only drawbacks are high price and Jim, where do you fuel up in the winter?

Yeah. That's the deal. I can dream but it just can't pencil out. I'm happy enough with what we have in place and the overhead we don't have.

[sbrownian]

Talk about pumped storage!

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles ... n=GTMDaily

Grand Coulee has the ability to do pumped storage, but it's mostly used to fill the head end of the Central Washington irrigation system. Aka Columbia Basin Reclamation System, (Banks Lake.)

There are two 45 megawatt turbines on the outlet of the lake that feed the canal system, (plus some others at various altitude change points,) so there is some effort made to recover some of the energy put into getting that water lifted up into the lake. (About 120MW total.)

Looks like there is a project in the works to up the pumped storage capabilities to 500 megawatts for peak power production support. Grand Coulee total power output is over 6800 MW..

http://www.cbhydropower.org/proposed-ba ... oject.html

[SomeJ]

Now that is cooler I have some more spare power and I was was thinking what to do with it. As I cannot sell it back to the power company I decided to rebuild couple old servers and commission them to crunch numbers for BOINC projects https://boinc.berkeley.edu/

I chose the project https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ you can join here if you wish: https://join.worldcommunitygrid.org?recruiterId=1133543

We could create a new team if more are willing to join. Computing power generated by solar power :)

I was thinking for bitcoin or other platform to sell computing power but the money yield is not worth it. Better donate for science than try to make some a###s rich.

What other ideas you have to use the extra power you generate if you don't sell to grid?

@EA6LE-ONE Im with you on joining a solar power BOINC team!!! Where I'm at it can get quite cold during the winters. Its been on my to do list to figure out the BOINC API and then do some scripting with some home automation to auto start crunching on computers/servers around the house/property when there is excess power (and in places where the heat could be put to use).

During winter time, my manual process is to fire up a space heater in one of the pump houses (live on a small ranch with multiple wells) or heat the (currently empty) guest casita higher than normal, I figure when there is extra power and I can't send it anywhere else I'll just heat a space higher than normal so the heater can stay off longer through the night. (almost got the perl library for my main system completed (its not an outback system to not dropping any names), then I'll start rocking and rolling with getting it tied into the home automation to handle turning that stuff on and off.)

Summer times when we have extra power I start the window AC units up sooner or more fans to circulate air (go go home automation!!). Would be great to find a way to still use that power for science, but during the summers here it gets very warm and generating extra heat usually is not a good thing... unless there is a more centralized way to control exactly where the heat goes... (preheating water for the water heater, pool heater, hot tub... yes i know several extras there, but they all take energy to heat) (and some fun creative R&D to make it happen ) Got lots of other ideas on how to use that energy but they can get quite crazy and even less practical for some setups :P

Circling back to the BOINC thing though... I'd much rather spend my extra power to generate heat while processing stuff for science than just burning it with resistive heaters. If there is a solar power team to join or if you make one, I'd gladly join!! (currently crunching on Einstein@Home, LHC@Home, Milkyway@Home, nanoHUB@home, Rosetta@Home, and SETI@Home, granted SETI@home recently shut down so should just remove it from the projects list.) I've heard of world community grid but never looked into it, might have to give it a try if it is putting the cpu cycles to good science use . I've used Gridrepublic in the past to manage hosts and projects but they had some goofy bugs that went years without fixing so I gave up and reverted back to managing each host manually.

Happy crunching!
J

[EA6LE-ONE]

@somej

I checked on a solar team on BOINC, but none that stand out there. so right now I joined Romania team (that where I am originally from). I have 4 servers ( 104 cores) dedicated to world community grid. Also I have my workstation with a RTX 2070 crunching for collatz. I run 2 servers and the workstation all the time and depending how much sun is in the day 2 servers are manually turned on and off. that is roughly between 20 to 30kW daily.
I drive 350-450 miles monthly and if I get an EV will not work here as we don't have mechanics and garages that can maintain and fix them. I drive a truck as is needed for my work and I pay about $125.00 for gas. so for a tesla truck the cost is not justified.
I plan to increase my solar array with another 7kW capacity as in the winter the production was on par with consumption specially with some clouds passing over. I had guests over Christmas from England and their AC needs was more than my system can handle. So the upgrade is necessary. maybe next lockdown I will do it. go virus, do your thing :) NOT!!!

[SHunsader]

If power is free, mine bitcoin. It's the largest expense in finding a coin. - Steve

[EA6LE-ONE]

mining bitcoin is waste of processing power. I prefer to donate my power for science. for me bitcoin is just an iou. it worth as much as useless thought.