Solar panels generating electricity are great for the few hours of full sunlight that the diurnal cycle gives us. Then the complications of energy storage kick in, the expenses, capital cost, the permissions for grid tie, whatever.
Taking as an example Ethereum, the solar array is sized to mine Ethereum using whatever hardware is necessary to do this using power generated. You depreciate the physical plant (solar cells, power conditioning, computers, Internet access and whatever back up battery is necessary for soft shutdowns) and pay taxes on the coins mined (as I suspect the IRS views it this way in any event). Whatever "green power" tax breaks that come your way figure into the mix. As a business, there are many tax breaks and expenses the ordinary wage slave can only imagine. No employees need be hired just contractors for the installation and maintenance.
If the crypto currency mined rises in value, you achieve better than 100% "efficiency", if it depreciates, well, that's life. This seems to have the benefits of low regulation overhead, known hardware, potential efficiency and it could pay your electric and ISP bills.-- daddyvortex, Jan 17 2018 it costs roughly $5,000 in electricity to mine a coin in the States. If you can generate that kind of solar power you can probably make more money selling the power than mining Crypto.-- theircompetitor, Jan 17 2018 To make this _really_ green, you'd want to use the waste heat generated by the hardware. You could water-cool the processors (thereby getting hot water), or use it for space heating.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 17 2018 // I say that the value of an individual crypto coin should start off higher if it was mined using lower capability equipment, to compensate.//
Result : new mining rigs built of massively parallel arrays of really tiny semi-autonomous circuits, optimised for mining and pessimised for whatever the computation capacity test actually is. So it wouldn't change anything noticably.-- Loris, Jan 18 2018 theircompetitor: I have failed to note that this is a scheme for single home solar power generation and storage that has the advantage of becoming a business expense and means to depreciate the equipment. In Ohio with the AEP, they won't pay you cash for your surplus electricity, just a set off against your power bill so you can't really "sell" your power (OTOH, the "net metering" is not taxed AFAIK). And the grid tie tariff guidelines can be fairly stringent with inspections etc. Since the storage medium proposed is a crypto currency, you don't have much regulation. Remember, "whatever 100 businessmen commonly do is legal."
This idea could be a good storage plan for unused "baseline" power generation capacity. Truly enormous mining outfits could treat their power needs like the arc furnace steel mills do, shop around and try to run when the power is cheap.-- daddyvortex, Jan 18 2018 Can use electricity too for electroplating shit, like and ‘store’ it as wealth that way.-- DDRopDeadly, Jan 19 2018 random, halfbakery