5 ms·

If you consume more power than what the electrical company can supply your main breaker will trip. Unless those people are bypassing breakers I don’t see what’

If you consume more power than what the electrical company can supply your main breaker will trip. Unless those people are bypassing breakers I don’t see what’s the big deal. If the electrical company tells you that you can draw 20A and gives you a 20A breaker then you should be allowed to use it.

mondoshawan 8y ago
Precisely! If they are bypassing the breakers, then that's "breaking and entering" on the public utility's property -- the mining isn't the "unauthorized" part.
ythose 8y ago
The only purpose of a breaker is to prevent current from heating up wires beyond a safe level. They don't indicate anything about power capacity for a given neighborhood.
- pm24601 8y ago
  Yes they did: > In one instance last year, the transformer outside a bootleg miner’s home overheated and touched off a grass fire, Chelan County PUD officials say.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    In which case the utility is the one at fault for not properly calculating the capacity of their grid. If a transformer is rated to supply 1000A then you should not under any circumstances allow more to be drawn from it.
- syshum 8y ago
  Yes and no, the Service Breakers in your home panel are there for safety yes. However when you sign up for Services you sign up for a given Amp level of service, the Power company then has the expectation to be able to supply you with that level of current at that location Most residential Homes have either 100 or 200amp service. 100amp service would probably be enough to run about 50 cards (assuming each card running at at 250w power draw that may be high no idea)
tw04 8y ago
That's not even remotely accurate. Power companies oversubscribe just like everyone else. That's why they give you a discount for hooking up a device on your air conditioner they can remotely control during peak times to even out power usage. Also why you hear of rolling outages during extremely hot summer weather when everyone has their ac on at the same time. That's why they have a different service for business users. If they were equipped to service every home at 100% all of the time, your bill would be about 10x what it currently is.
- briandear 8y ago
  That problem doesn’t exist in Washington State.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Then maybe they shouldn’t be oversubscribing, or finally upgrade the infrastructure now that they milked out enough money from the oversubscription and the energy consumption is finally catching up. Another solution is to make a proper “burstable” tariff with the corresponding meter that would give you a baseline current allowance plus a peak current allowance for X seconds. As it stands however they are selling packages promising X amps and are pissed off because someone is actually using X amps. Well they definitely don’t earn any sympathy from me - this kind of behaviour reeks of scum.
  - tw04 8y ago
    Right, 100 years of service that works perfectly fine should be thrown out the window. The rest of us should all pay a 10x increase so Bitcoin miners can abuse the system. And oh, btw, when the 10x increase occurs, the Bitcoin miners won't be able to afford it, so we'll have a glut of unused power that we'll all have to eat the cost of. Brilliant idea.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      Do you mean you are happy with being sold a tariff promising X amps while cutting you off when you do use those X amps? Look, I dislike Bitcoin too, but what I dislike even more is companies making money promising X and then actually cutting you off should you dare to use that X. At the moment, the "miners" are paying for an energy tariff that promises them X and are using X; the fact they're using it on Bitcoin is completely irrelevant, the problem is that a company is making money on false promises and somehow the buyer is the one at fault? We've already got this bullshit with "unlimited" data, let's not set a precedent by tolerating this for energy tariffs. If the grid can't sustain everyone using 100 amps then they shouldn't be selling 100 amp tariffs and should switch to "burstable" tariffs with a continuous allowance of let's say 50 amps and a "burst" allowance of 100 amps for X seconds.

mondoshawan 8y ago

Precisely! If they are bypassing the breakers, then that's "breaking and entering" on the public utility's property -- the mining isn't the "unauthorized" part.

ythose 8y ago

The only purpose of a breaker is to prevent current from heating up wires beyond a safe level. They don't indicate anything about power capacity for a given neighborhood.

pm24601 8y ago
Yes they did: > In one instance last year, the transformer outside a bootleg miner’s home overheated and touched off a grass fire, Chelan County PUD officials say.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  In which case the utility is the one at fault for not properly calculating the capacity of their grid. If a transformer is rated to supply 1000A then you should not under any circumstances allow more to be drawn from it.
syshum 8y ago
Yes and no, the Service Breakers in your home panel are there for safety yes. However when you sign up for Services you sign up for a given Amp level of service, the Power company then has the expectation to be able to supply you with that level of current at that location Most residential Homes have either 100 or 200amp service. 100amp service would probably be enough to run about 50 cards (assuming each card running at at 250w power draw that may be high no idea)

tw04 8y ago

That's not even remotely accurate. Power companies oversubscribe just like everyone else. That's why they give you a discount for hooking up a device on your air conditioner they can remotely control during peak times to even out power usage. Also why you hear of rolling outages during extremely hot summer weather when everyone has their ac on at the same time. That's why they have a different service for business users. If they were equipped to service every home at 100% all of the time, your bill would be about 10x what it currently is.

briandear 8y ago
That problem doesn’t exist in Washington State.
Rjevski 8y ago
Then maybe they shouldn’t be oversubscribing, or finally upgrade the infrastructure now that they milked out enough money from the oversubscription and the energy consumption is finally catching up. Another solution is to make a proper “burstable” tariff with the corresponding meter that would give you a baseline current allowance plus a peak current allowance for X seconds. As it stands however they are selling packages promising X amps and are pissed off because someone is actually using X amps. Well they definitely don’t earn any sympathy from me - this kind of behaviour reeks of scum.
- tw04 8y ago
  Right, 100 years of service that works perfectly fine should be thrown out the window. The rest of us should all pay a 10x increase so Bitcoin miners can abuse the system. And oh, btw, when the 10x increase occurs, the Bitcoin miners won't be able to afford it, so we'll have a glut of unused power that we'll all have to eat the cost of. Brilliant idea.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    Do you mean you are happy with being sold a tariff promising X amps while cutting you off when you do use those X amps? Look, I dislike Bitcoin too, but what I dislike even more is companies making money promising X and then actually cutting you off should you dare to use that X. At the moment, the "miners" are paying for an energy tariff that promises them X and are using X; the fact they're using it on Bitcoin is completely irrelevant, the problem is that a company is making money on false promises and somehow the buyer is the one at fault? We've already got this bullshit with "unlimited" data, let's not set a precedent by tolerating this for energy tariffs. If the grid can't sustain everyone using 100 amps then they shouldn't be selling 100 amp tariffs and should switch to "burstable" tariffs with a continuous allowance of let's say 50 amps and a "burst" allowance of 100 amps for X seconds.