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It's definitely an opportunity, but the price at peak production periods is near zero precisely because nobody has yet figured out how to soak up these kinds of
by _delirium 9y ago
It's definitely an opportunity, but the price at peak production periods is near zero precisely because nobody has yet figured out how to soak up these kinds of transient production peaks effectively, with sufficiently fast ramp-up and scale. It won't stay at zero if some big users figure out how to use that energy profitably. Though that wouldn't be bad overall. If some large users did figure out how to take advantage of these periods, it'd be a step towards smoothing out both grid pricing and usage.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- philipodonnell 9y agoCryptocurrency miners have the fast ramp-up and scale required.
- labster 9y agoBut they're profitable at high energy demand times too, so there's no incentive for them to run only during low demand.
- walrus01 9y agoCryptocurrent miners have a strong incentive to locate in places where the $ per kWh rate is consistently low 24x7x365, not just for peaks. Such as near a hydroelectric dam in east Wenatchee WA. Mining also requires very little in the way of network connectivity, maybe 10Mbps at most, so it can be located just about anywhere.
- DrScump 9y agoRelevant article from this week regarding miner activity in that area: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551848
- _delirium 9y agoIt appears empirically that they don't. If they did, there wouldn't still be peak-production periods when energy was near zero cost, since they would've arbitraged that out.
- stordoff 9y agoDoes that run the risk of being damaging to the currency network -- could transient spikes of mining push up the difficulty and thus affect functionality once the energy price goes back up?
- usrusr 9y agoYou don't even need energy spikes for that, it already happens when hashrate is mobile between different networks.
- stordoff 9y agoThat's actually what made me think of it (Nicehash pushing up the difficulty on the smaller coins); I just wasn't sure if something more cyclical would have the same effect or be easier to counter.
- imtringued 9y agoCryptocurrency mining isn't enetgy constrained. Right now it it is capital constrained. Your primary costs are fixed upfront purchases of ASICs and GPUs.
- saagarjha 9y agoIs there really nothing that we could do with this excess energy? Couldn't we purify water or run simulations or something similar?
- greglindahl 9y agoIt's not economically effective to run a supercomputer only during peak times.
- _delirium 9y agoSome Nordic countries that have large district-heating systems have started experimenting with dumping the excess energy into those.
- greglindahl 9y agoElectricity to heat is not that efficient; normally district heating systems run off of the waste heat of electricity generation. Are you talking about an example where the waste heat isn't enough to power the district heat?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- usrusr 9y agoActual energy to heat is only useful in a true excess energy availability situation, but usually you'd start building up heat storage to decouple heat availability from electricity demand, which would otherwise be a problem with cogen plants. And heat storage is so much cheaper and efficient than electrical storage, so you want to run your cogen in sync with electricity demand. Once the heat storage is there, it becomes an absolute no-brainer to also use it when you have excess electricity to dump (as electric heating is 100% efficient, it's the production of electricity in thermal plants that makes electric the worst form of heating).
- kwhitefoot 9y agoWe use heat pumps for district heating in Drammen, Norway. Run this through your favourite translation engine to read all about it: http://www.energi.no/brakeroya-varmesentral-apnet http://www.energi.no/brakeroya-varmesentral-apnet
- walrus01 9y agoIf the "hydrogen economy" people ever figure out a way to make the equipment and fuel cells economical, cracking hydrogen from water at times when power is $0.00 per kWh could be one method. Takes a massive amount of amperage. Store it in tanks and use as needed through giant fuel cells.
- greglindahl 9y agoEnergy losses from this scenario are high enough that there are probably other usage scenarios that would beat it. It's certainly the case that there are already many peak-storage solutions deployed and none of them involve hydrogen.
- nkurz 9y agothere are already many peak-storage solutions deployed and none of them involve hydrogen That seems like an overstatement. There has definitely been considerable research into using hydrogen as "peak-storage solution", and I think some approaches are actually being deployed. For example, here's an NREL story from last year: https://www.nrel.gov/continuum/energy_integration/hydrogen.html https://www.nrel.gov/continuum/energy_integration/hydrogen.h... The article agrees with you that the current inefficiencies of the round-trip to the grid are large, but claims that generating hydrogen as a vehicular fuel using excess solar and wind power does make sense. So if the parent was envisioning those "giant fuel cells" as being mobile (or located somewhere really remote), then he's not that far off.
- dpark 9y agoThat’s a demonstration project and to the extent that it’s “deployed”, so are tokamaks. Hydrogen may be feasible for peak balancing but it seems correct to say that it is not currently used this way.
- greglindahl 9y agoOK, so what % of peak storage solution is hydrogen?
- deleted 9y ago
- greglindahl 9y agoIt's kind of entertaining that you mostly said the same thing as the person you replied to, but apparently don't realize it.
- nkurz 9y agoWhy do you see it as the same? Gibbon1 points out that there is a current opportunity for a business that can take advantage of sporadically available almost free power, and _delirium extends this to say that paradoxically this opportunity will disappear as soon as there is a business that can use this power. Gibbon1 may or may not agree that the opportunity will disappear once it's being utilized, but this wasn't mentioned in his comment. So what is _delirium failing to realize?