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It's not a subsidy to renewables. Bitcoin miners don't give two shits about whether their energy is green or not. You want to help level out peaks and troughs
by ForHackernews 8y ago
It's not a subsidy to renewables. Bitcoin miners don't give two shits about whether their energy is green or not.
You want to help level out peaks and troughs of electricty production: Improve battery technology, don't just waste the energy generating sha256 over and over.
- stale2002 8y agoIt is a subsidy, in that this was free energy that renewables were unable to profit from, previously. Before: The energy from a hydro plants gets wasted when it is night time. After: Now they get money. The hydro plant is now making money on something that they were just throwing away, previously, and thus it is a subsidy.
- foxrob92 8y ago>Before: The energy from a hydro plants gets wasted when it is night time. Hydro plants can usually turn off relatively quickly. They can be used as pump storage, which is an incredibly efficient way of storing energy - >70% efficiency [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...