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Well, unless you replace furnaces with bitcoin mining hardware. But then again, I'd rather replace a furnace with a more productive set of hardware anyway.
by eganist 11y ago
Well, unless you replace furnaces with bitcoin mining hardware.
But then again, I'd rather replace a furnace with a more productive set of hardware anyway.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoHeat pump. EDIT: Unless you live somewhere where the ambient temp goes below ~0F, get a heat pump.
- eganist 11y agoHence furnaces. Unless someone's managed to create servers which become cooler upon load, I'd assume these boxes wouldn't be able to substitute for heat pumps. But in general, I agree with you. :)
- martindevans 11y agoWhat's special about 255K (0F) in relation to heat pumps?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoJust a number I picked from domain knowledge. Almost all newer heat pumps can still efficiently pull heat out of that temperature, although some more expensive ones can go all the way down to -20 - -30F ambient air temp. EDIT: If you're in a colder climate, in-ground coolant loops are preferred over an air transfer heat pump.
- martindevans 11y agoAh I see. So it's nothing fundamental, just a limit on our current heat pump technology.
- wlesieutre 11y agoA couple of things: 1) With electric heat you have to account for the energy production and grid transmission being around 30% efficient. Even though an electric heater or bitcoin miner is converting electricity to heat 100% efficiently, a majority of the thermal energy released in the power plant was already thrown out as waste. 2) Even using electricity, a heat pump beats the electric heaters. They're 2-3x as "efficient" in terms of how much heat it pushes into the house vs how much electricity it takes to do it. Technically this is measured as "coefficient of performance" instead of efficiency, since it's a ratio of heat transferred / energy consumed, rather than energy released / energy consumed (and efficiency >100% wouldn't make much sense). 3) Gas furnaces can be >90% efficient, which also beats the bitcoin miners. Even the lowest efficiency allowed by law (78%) is better than resistive electric. 4) There's more "embodied energy" in building a bitcoin miner than an electric heater, and it has a very short life as a useful miner before it's obseleted by newer chips. Resistive electric heating only makes sense if you're looking for a low cost solution in a climate with a very minor cold season. And I highly doubt anybody's going to buy a bitcoin miner with the intent to only run it 3 weeks a year when it gets chilly outside. Bitcoin is basically a giant scheme to extract as much value for the miners by dumping a bunch of externalities on everyone else in the form of fossil fuel subsidies and greenhouse gas production. Not a fan.
- codyb 11y agoI totally agree, but I'm also curious how expensive in terms of resources distributing paper and metal currency is? Presumably mining zinc, copper, aluminum, etc must have pretty big costs to the environment? Paper is mostly paper but isn't it also some special silk? At least here in the US. Those seem slightly more renewable for paper. But yea, creating an extra power plants worth of fumes is pretty shitty over time. I believe there's one currency which at the very least does some sorts of scientific calculations with the processing power? Maybe we should at least encourage those types of coins.
- icebraining 11y agoBitcoin is basically a giant scheme to extract as much value for the miners by dumping a bunch of externalities on everyone else in the form of fossil fuel subsidies and greenhouse gas production. Not a fan. How is that different from any other of thousands of energy-intensive services?