WO2019116375A1

WO2019116375A1 - Excess electrical production capacity converter

Info

Publication number: WO2019116375A1
Application number: PCT/IL2018/051362
Authority: WO
Inventors: Eran MAIMON
Original assignee: Maimon Eran
Priority date: 2017-12-17
Filing date: 2018-12-17
Publication date: 2019-06-20

Abstract

A novel means and method for utilizing excess solar production capacity requiring neither storage nor transmission is introduced. In one embodiment this takes the form of a solar kit with embedded blockchain mining equipment, whereby an excess electricity generated by the system is used to generate income through mining of virtual currencies. Generally, any computational task having a market value can be considered for use.

Description

SOLAR OFF-GRID KIT WITH EMBEDDED BLOCKCHAIN

MINER

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a means for utilizing excess energy production capacity.

Background of the Invention

Energy production systems are often sized to deal with peak loads, or alternatively to deal with minima in energy availability. For example, in solar off-grid energy production systems, the sizing may be chosen to deal with the lowest anticipated daily insolation.

The solar insolation varies throughout the year, thus generally off-grid systems are sized to be capable of harvesting a certain minimum amount of energy at the lowest expected lighting conditions expected, to ensure essential functions of the system even in these conditions. As a result, most of the time there is an excess capacity of generation in the system, that will be lost if not used locally, transported elsewhere, or stored. Likewise, electric generation plants, generators, and any electric energy generation system will generally be sized to cover the peak load (e.g. mid-day in summer) , and therefore a large amount of excess capacity is not used during off-peak hours.

Generally speaking the excess energy can either be used locally, transported elsewhere (e.g. by feeding into an electrical grid for remote use), or stored. However as will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, storage involves capital investment, inevitable conversion loss, and will have a necessarily limited capacity, growing only with increased capital investment. Likewise, transfer to a grid that is physically distant involves inevitable transfer losses including conversion inefficiency and transport inefficiency, and also requires power-transfer infrastructure (namely a grid connection) that may not be available in remote areas. Running high-voltage lines to remove areas can have prohibitive costs, e.g. over $300,000USD per mile for a 10MW line.

There is thus a long-felt need for a different approach to conversion of excess energy from renewable sources that avoids the need for both storage and power transfer.

Summary of the Invention

The present invention is further described in detail with the accompanying drawings and describe a principle view of the invention. The exemplary embodiments and illustrations are not intended to be limiting the scope of the present invention.

An object of the present invention is to provide a system to locally utilize the excess electricity that may be generated by over capacity of any energy-generating system, instead of storing or transporting this energy. Note that by using the energy locally, storage and transmission capital costs and running costs (as well as inefficiencies) are avoided. In a preferred embodiment, the excess capacity is used to solve computational problems, preferably ones for which there is an online market and therefore a computable market value. A known value per kWh of computation will exist in such markets which assists in operation of the system, as will be detailed in the following.

Instead of transporting or storing excess energy, the current invention simply transfers this extra energy into computation, thereby generating money in a computation market.

Still further objects and advantages will become apparent from a consideration of the ensuing description and drawings.

These and other objectives, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description, the accompanying drawings, and the appended assertions.

The foregoing embodiments of the invention have been described and illustrated in conjunction with systems and methods thereof, which are meant to be merely illustrative, and not limiting. Furthermore just as every particular reference may embody particular methods/systems, yet not require such, ultimately such teaching is meant for all expressions notwithstanding the use of particular embodiments.

Brief Description of the Drawings

Embodiments and features of the present invention are described herein in conjunction with the following drawings: FIG. 1 is describing a schematic design of the hardware in one embodiment of the invention.

FIG .2 is a graph of profitability variation over time for a cryptocurrency.

Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments

The present invention will be understood from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, which are meant to be descriptive and not limiting. For the sake of brevity, some well-known features, methods, systems, procedures, components, circuits, and so on, are not described in detail.

An object of the present invention is to utilize the excess electricity that may be generated by over capacity of any energy-generating system. For example, a solar installation will produce excess energy on days that have higher insolation, which will either be used locally, used remotely (ie fed into a grid) , stored, or wasted. Note that by using the energy locally, storage and transmission capital costs, running costs, and inefficiencies are all avoided.

In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the excess energy is used to solve computational problems, preferably ones for which there is an online market and hence a known market value. A value per kWh of computation will exist in such markets, and market forces will tend to drive this towards the value per kWh of energy; as the market reaches greater maturity, more resources will be dedicated to computation when the profitably is higher, thereby driving down the profitability and shifting the system towards an equilibrium. A familiar example of such a market is the market for blockchain mining, used for producing Bitcoins (BTC) . A computer (ASIC, GPU, or CPU) is used to perform computations that are of value to the network and which yield bitcoins to those doing the calculation (miners) . The value of these computations (in BTC) will affect the number of miners willing to mine, with a resulting equilibrium wherein the value of the computation per kWh tends towards the cost of electricity per kWh. Various forces also exist which will tend to drive the system out of equilibrium, often resulting in large swings in the profitability of mining. See for example Fig. 2 for an example of the mining profitability of a cryptocurrency as it varies over time.

Obviously, any computation market where computation is bought and sold on any sort of exchange may be used with the system; blockchain mining is simply one concrete example from a number of possible current and conceivable markets.

Other markets exist, notably in the world of web services, where online servers including CPUs and GPUs may be rented by hour or month, from various entities such as Amazon, Google, and IBM. These are not computation markets per-se, but are in principle the current invention is adapted for service as an online service of this sort, where the price per hour may be adapted by taking into account the local production price of energy. In any case, the invention simply uses any extra energy production capacity for computation instead of transporting, storing, or not using the excess energy. The system thereby generates income in the computation market instead of (for example) selling the energy to the grid.

In one embodiment, the system is entirely off-grid, and any excess energy not being used locally is used for computation. This embodiment needs no grid connection, thus saving considerable capital expense otherwise needed for solar installations.

In another embodiment of the invention, a grid connection is provided. In this case a rubric of the following sort may be used : when the local electric feed-in tariff (payout rate for feeding electricity to the grid) is higher than the computation profitability per kWh, energy is fed to the grid, while otherwise the energy is used for computation.

All of the above systems may be provided with some degree of storage capacity, for example allowing for computation to continue throughout the night. This will provide a shorter ROI for the GPUs and other computer equipment needed.

A well planned system will take into account the capital cost and compute capacity of computation equipment, cost and energy production capacity of the energy production elements such as solar panels, and capacity and cost of storage if used. According to one embodiment of the present invention, the foregoing and other objects and advantages are attained by a solar off grid kit , as exemplified by the block diagram of Fig. 1. ln this case we have as embedded blockchain miner which comprises

a) solar panels(s) 112;

b) a battery 108;

c) inputs and outputs for electricity;

d) inputs and outputs for data;

e) a charging logic for different inputs and battery types 110;

f) a Pay As You Go module;

g) a user interface, keypad, and screen;

h) a discharging regulator;

I) Nonvolatile memory;

j) communications module (eg USB, BlueTooth, GSM, wifi, etc)

k) an MCU to control all modules;

l) a blockchain mining hardware (e.g. GPU, ASIC, FPGA etc.)

m) Appliances for use with the solar kit

n) An app for smartphone control

o) Visible lights for battery status

p) fcons for speed of discharging with gaming capabilities

q) Connections between such kits to have the ability to form a

micro grid.

The kit may include any of the above components or omit any of them and may also include unlisted components. When so desired, (e.g. when the storage batteries are full and production is greater than load) , the blockchain mining hardware equipment is activated and generates income by e.g. mining cryptocurrencies or other blockchain assets.

An exemplary embodiment provides a solar kit with standard connectors, including but not limited to the following elements: a) 12V car socket outputs

b) USB outputs

c) LED light outputs

d) TV/Radio outputs

e) MC4 solar panel inputs

f) AC/DC charger input

g) 2 to 16 AWG Wire inputs

h) 2 to 16 AWG Wire outputs

The kit may include any of the following:

solar panel of e.g. 100W

battery of e.g. 40Ah 12V deep cycle lead acid

keypad and a PAYG module with code to unlock the system memory card and GSM 3G or higher to store the data.

The MCU includes a software that triggers the activation of the mining card when triggered by the user or when the battery is full and the consumption of connected appliances is less than what the solar panel is able to generate. The mining card is fed from the 12V line that comes from the battery and / or straight from the input after passing a regulating circuit to prevent noise and wear of the mining card (e.g. GPU, FPGU,and or ASIC) . 3.3V and 5V logic comes from the MCU board and/or USB terminals.

The calculated hash is saved in the memory and subsequently transmitted through the communications module to the internet in predefined periods of time, e.g. between 1ms to 10 days depending on the specifics of the mined entity. The software is surveying available mining pools and joins the most profitable at a given moment. In every cycle to software may switch a pool in order to optimize profitability of the mining. For example, Mining of ETH with Nvidia 1060 as the mining card attached to the kit has given 15 to 18Mh with 120W consumption at the time of one exemplified experiment.

In some embodiments of the invention , energy input may derive from sources other than solar such as wind mill, hydropower etc.

In some embodiments of the invention, the system may be provided with a grid connection, e.g. for providing power when there is no alternative energy source, and/or for allowing feed- in to the grid when mining is less profitable than direct energy sale.

In some embodiments of the invention, the system is provided with software adapted to allow for payment of or earning currency from selling electricity to other kits connected to each other in the form of a micro grid.

In some embodiments of the invention, the system is provided with the possibility to pay or earn from selling and buying electricity with other electricity generation consumption devices with P2P electricity trading ability.

In some embodiments of the invention, a computing architecture enabled card is employed that will reduce signicantly power consumption for these type of calculations.

Storage capacity may be sized such that (for example) the average daily total input available minus the maximum energy consumed by the mining hardware is provided. Alternatively, the storage capacity may be dictated by the total mining capacity and expected troughs in energy production. For example, for a solar system where approx. 5kWh may be forecast for every lkW of installed capacity, 5/24kW or about 200W of mining equipment may be installed for every kW of solar capacity, with about 4kWh of storage capacity sufficing to keep the system running overnight.

In some embodiments of the invention, the mining software algorithm checks the optimum pools to join managing a virtual wallet and presenting to the user the amount of currency earned and used and the state of power.

Additional advantages and features of the invention will become apparent from the description which follows, and may be realized by means of the instrumentalities and combinations.

Claims

1. A method for use of excess energy production capacity, consisting of the steps:

a. providing a source of electrical energy production;

b. identifying one or more computation markets having a market value per computation cycle or equivalent;

c. providing computing means adapted to perform computations available on said computation markets;

d. using said computing means and said excess energy production capacity , performing computations on said markets; whereby excess energy is converted to capital in said computation markets, thereby utilizing said energy locally without requiring transport nor storage .

2. The method of claim 1 further providing a grid tie-in allowing for:

a. use of grid electricity to run said computing means when said means for energy production is not available or at low capacity;

b. sale of said excess energy production capacity when the economic value of performing computations on said markets is less than the value of direct sale to the grid.

3. The method of claim 1 further providing energy storage means adapted to allow for excess energy storage, allowing for the use of said computing means when said means for energy production is not available or at low capacity.

4. The system of claim 1 wherein said source of energy production is selected from the group consisting of: solar; wind; thermal; hydropower.

5. A system for use of excess energy production capacity, consisting of: a. a source of electrical energy production;

b. computing means adapted to perform computations available on said computation markets;

c. communications means adapted to transmit the results of said computations to a network;

whereby excess energy is converted to capital on one or more computation markets, thereby utilizing said energy locally without requiring transport nor storage.

6. The system of claim 4 further having a grid tie-in allowing for:

7. The system of claim 4 further having energy storage means adapted to allow for excess energy storage, allowing for the use of said computing means when said means for energy production is not available or at low capacity.

8. The system of claim 4 wherein said source of energy production is selected from the group consisting of: solar; wind; thermal; hydropower.