Passive income ideas for your PC?

[Drake Jest]

Hey guys im exploring ideas on how to make a bit of passive money from my PC. A couple of months back i had installed solar on my house (very cheap since i know the ins and outs) and i just basically filled up my whole roof with panels. Its great and all but i have a suffering from success moment, my bill currently is at a negative ~2000$ and is still going down, my electric company does not let you withdraw this amount and it expires after 1 year. Im basically donating money to the electric company.

 

I have been scrambling ideas how i can make passive money with that excess electricity, and the only thing that pops into my mind is crypto mining. Are there other alternatives ? 

 

Im at work during the day so the house is barely using any power during the day, The other idea i have is a small 3d printer that prints during the day but selling 3d prints takes a bit more effort on my part. I also doubt that a 3d printer draws that much power ( i read only about 0.07kWh).

 

 

[Levent]

19 minutes ago, Drake Jest said:

Are there other alternatives ? 

Nope. Computing is cheap as hell nowadays, if this was 40 years ago maybe then there would have been some demand.

[Imakuni]

21 minutes ago, Drake Jest said:

I have been scrambling ideas how i can make passive money with that excess electricity, and the only thing that pops into my mind is crypto mining. Are there other alternatives ? 

If your companny allows for this, you can transfer the excess to another house. Say, your parents or grandparents, you can basically pay their electric bill for them.

 

Another option is to just use it, though not for money, but instead for distributed computing. Read, Folding (there's an even coming this week which has some prizes) or BOINC. If you were well know in some boinc fanatic circles, I know some folks that would pay for you to run stuff to farm credits.

 

Just don't mine with it. Mining is wasted energy, one way or another.

[PDifolco]

26 minutes ago, Drake Jest said:

Hey guys im exploring ideas on how to make a bit of passive money from my PC. A couple of months back i had installed solar on my house (very cheap since i know the ins and outs) and i just basically filled up my whole roof with panels. Its great and all but i have a suffering from success moment, my bill currently is at a negative ~2000$ and is still going down, my electric company does not let you withdraw this amount and it expires after 1 year. Im basically donating money to the electric company.

 

I have been scrambling ideas how i can make passive money with that excess electricity, and the only thing that pops into my mind is crypto mining. Are there other alternatives ? 

 

Im at work during the day so the house is barely using any power during the day, The other idea i have is a small 3d printer that prints during the day but selling 3d prints takes a bit more effort on my part. I also doubt that a 3d printer draws that much power ( i read only about 0.07kWh).

 

 

Use your power for something else, charging cars for example...

[ThousandBlade]

3D printing not a passive income, you have fiddle with the setting, clean the parts and mail them out.

It will end up eating up a lot of your time.

 

Other than trying to use it up, or convert other aspects of the house to electricity.

Crypto is still your best option

[jaslion]

Could get some junk laptop, desktop,... spin em up and make em run. Even automate it via home assistant and such that when you go beyond x power negative a day they get a sleep command.

 

Plenty old scrappy hardware that people chucked because it wasn't efficient enough to mine on.

 

Bonus is that you can use them as a heat source in winter too

 

[manikyath]

just how much excess solar do you have?

 

first thought, is there anything gas powered you could replace with an electric equivalent? 

 

also - are you assuming you will have this surplus year round? if you use electric heating in winter, that combined with reduced solar income in winter will probably negate most of the bill you built up in summer.

[Drake Jest]

7 hours ago, Imakuni said:

If your companny allows for this, you can transfer the excess to another house. Say, your parents or grandparents, you can basically pay their electric bill for them.

Unfortunately no, if this would be possible this is what i would have done, since it would be the easiest no investment to additional equipment needed.

 

7 hours ago, PDifolco said:

Use your power for something else, charging cars for example...

No electric cars here in my country thats is affordable yet

 

6 hours ago, manikyath said:

just how much excess solar do you have?

 

first thought, is there anything gas powered you could replace with an electric equivalent? 

 

also - are you assuming you will have this surplus year round? if you use electric heating in winter, that combined with reduced solar income in winter will probably negate most of the bill you built up in summer.

Oh this is a nice idea, I think i might indeed buy an induction stove/oven. Will have to cost analysis because gas is cheap here about 20 $ for 10kg. Im in a tropical region, there is no winter. Production in the rain season is still pretty good

 

 

But it looks like i still have to mine crypto even if its not cost efficient.

[manikyath]

2 hours ago, Drake Jest said:

Will have to cost analysis because gas is cheap

gas is cheap <> power is free.

 

also, there's your answer why the power company doesnt pay for excess solar: in tropical regions it's a royal pain in the butt for them to manage.

[rkv_2401]

Run Folding@home or BOINC and mine Gridcoin/Banano/Curecoin etc., yeah you don't make a lot of money but at least you're doing good and you get some reward for it - and you're not donating (as much) money to the electricity company.