10 ms·

I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is

I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-priced during such periods. If bitcoin soaks up that power, it won't be negative-priced, and other loads won't be moved to use it, and they'll use power from non-renewable sources during some other time of day. There's all sorts of demand shifting that can be done. Most articles talk about washers and dryers, and certainly that's one smaller load, but also EV charging, pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening), etc.

dnautics 6y ago
"every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else" Not really? Batteries have limited capacity so at the point where the grid cannot buy any and your battery is topped up, you're mining bitcoin.
- Blumfid 6y ago
  And who will invest in batteries or other direct useful power usage if burning it through asic's is just making more money? No one :(
  - scotty79 6y ago
    Bitcoin mining becomes less profitable the more people do it. At some point it gives you exactly as much as you pay for energy to mine. So if you can store electricity in the batteries for long enough to sell it for more than pruce of purchase then you are better off investing in the battery. But since batteries are expensive and inefficient, you might be better off investing in the wind turbine or solar panel and mine with it if you can't sell energy to the grid for more money. It's better than battery because when demand is high it gives energy, but it doesn't have to take energy when demand is low and it keeps itself financially afloat even when there's no high demand for a long time which might kill your battery energy storage enterprise. I know about at least one pumped storage facility that died because of that.
gruez 6y ago
> Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-priced during such periods. Clearly there aren't such worthwhile loads available, which is why the rates go negative in the first place. >pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening), Isn't this counter-productive? The middle of the day is also when the temperature is the hottest, so running AC full blast is also the most wasteful since it generates the biggest temperature gradient (and thus cooling loss).
- fy20 6y ago
  In terms of physics, no it doesn't make sense, it would consume less energy to turn it on when you get home (or set a timer for 30 mins before you get home). However electricity is usually the most expensive during the evening, and in places that have abundant solar, the cheapest during the day.
- Blumfid 6y ago
  That money should be used to invest in real energy storage and not burning it through asics and useless calculations.
  - silveraxe93 6y ago
    Is that your money? The whole point of money is that who owns it decides where it should be used.
    - Blumfid 6y ago
      Yes let's ignore that I'm living on the same planet as you do and it doesn't affect myself and my family. Right? And no we don't live in a society where this doesn't matter. You are not allowed to do with your money whatever you want. Buying a hitman: illegal in most of the world. And you do understand that it is hypocritical to create a ton of co2 and making farming in other countries really hard and complaining later about immigrants. Just putting it in perspective
randomhodler84 6y ago
I consider a spending all these joules of energy on securing the bitcoin blockchain to be one of the most important things we can do to ensure the prosperity of the people of Earth - in the face of tyrants, fraudsters and central bankers.
erentz 6y ago
> that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. This applies to so many things. Snapchat data center? YouTube using gigawatts to process and stream cat videos? On and on. It’s really hard to control what people do with energy. Much better to focus on ensuring its priced correctly and all it’s externalities are properly included in that price. Then we don’t have to involve ourselves in moral debates about what’s a valid or invalid use.
- riffraff 6y ago
  The problem with that is that you have to get the whole planet to agree, or you're just shifting the problem to a different country.
  - erentz 6y ago
    But does banning something do anything different? Say the USA bans Bitcoin mining due to concerns about its energy use. That doesn’t stop mining in China or elsewhere. On top of that the US now needs to set up an invasive investigation system for enforcing the ban within its own borders. Applies just as well to YouTube cat videos or any other poor use of energy in the digital realm. Banning YouTube in the USA doesn’t mean that China won’t have data centers streaming cat videos to the USA. Instead if the USA really was concerned about efficient use of energy and capturing the externalities it could extremely easily (in the scheme of things) work out a better pricing mechanism such as a CO2 tax, and implement it. If it were serious it would also be able to find many willing allies in Europe and elsewhere that would sign up to a multilateral treaty.
    - Blumfid 6y ago
      That would break bitcoin very fast. No american will continue to infest in bitcoin if the majority of miners is in china only
      - Nursie 6y ago
        But the majority of miners are already in China...
riffraff 6y ago
I think a more important objection is that increased demand for solar panels and batteries for bitcoin mining pushes up prices for those (edit: if bitcoin prices are above market price for electricity). It'd be "can't buu GPUs" all over again.
- scotty79 6y ago
  Pushing the price up makes manufacturing them more attractive which means more will be manufactured and we'll get to 100% solar sooner.
314 6y ago
Adding an elastic demand sink to a peaky supply in a way that is profitable is quite interesting. Joules that are not used at all are wasted. This converts that wasted generation into cash allowing expansion of the facilities and more Joules overall.
- scotty79 6y ago
  You can even drop the battery completely and keep the same dynamics.
- Yizahi 6y ago
  But it's not elastic. Or rather - it can be elastic theoretically but it will never be. If you have a cheap or even negative energy generation during peak generation hours and decide, hmm, I can run some hashing meanwhile without affecting demand. Ok, but then why would you turn off during peak demand hours? Why would you turn it off at any time? Why would anyone? It's still profitable, so everyone will run hashing 24/7. Just like today.
AYBABTME 6y ago
On boats with extra solar, running a dump load when batteries are full often happens by producing fresh water (desalination) or heating up water. If useful dump loads are available (pumped water?) then it's a good idea but bitcoin mining is better than nothing I guess. However having bitcoin mining as defacto dump load would probably demotivate work needed toward creating useful dump loads. I'm also wondering what incentives bitcoin as dump load would have in less wealthy regions where purchase power is no match to compete with BTC mining. Think of a world where most electricity is unaffordable to people, being wasted to hash some coins instead, because it's more "efficient" from a monetary standpoint.
- Blumfid 6y ago
  Independently of this, bitcoin will never run on just dump load energy.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    Mining bitcoin is less profitable the more people do it. If a lot of miners mine on mostly dump load energy, minig on anything else becomes uncompetitive.
pyinstallwoes 6y ago
I joke, but I also do not. The inevitable conclusion of this path with bitcoin mining is the fastest path towards creating a black hole. It's the exactly perfect incentive structure to maximize speed towards a blackhole ecological disaster. Caveat on disaster: Unless blackholes aren't real, or they are something else entirely.
nathias 6y ago
and every Joule that was used somewhere else wasn't used for bitcoin mining
scotty79 6y ago
We don't have a problem that we lack Joules. What we lack is the reason for the rich to buy Joule generating capacity beyond what's absolutely necessary. And Bitcoin could provide that reason.
omarforgotpwd 6y ago
Negative priced power is a problem for the people who own the solar panels. They want to make a return on their investment. If the business case improves, renewable capacity will build out faster.
canadianfella 6y ago
I’m pretty sure mid-day California summers are peak demand.
thinkmassive 6y ago
There are some situations where mining Bitcoin is a very good application of energy that will otherwise be wasted. Here are two that come to mind: 1. Flared gas from oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of extracting oil from the Earth. In the past this was vented straight to the atmosphere, which is a huge waste of energy and causes horrible air pollution. Capturing this gas isn’t useful for many applications because it happens in remote areas, but if there’s a network connection it can be harnessed for mining Bitcoin. 2. Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now. Neither of these is specific to Bitcoin, because the general concept is running a computer at full load for an extended duration. Bitcoin mining just happens to be the most logical (and profitable) application of that concept at present.
- bottled_poe 6y ago
  I don’t mean to direct this at you individually (the sentiment is throughout these threads) - I can’t help but despair when a community of engineers lack the ability to come up with creative solutions for using surplus energy. There is always a better use of those energy sources than Bitcoin mining. Some ideas: Extracting co2 from air, electrolysis, desalination, etc.
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    As an engineer I find both ideas very innovative. Nobody is desalinating their own water at home using waste heat. Oil wells are often located in an area where it would make no sense to transport a bunch of water to desalinate (perhaps that's a good idea for sea-based wells though). I don't know enough about co2 extraction or electrolysis, only that those also don't sound like things people are likely to do at home.
- amalcon 6y ago
  I have no cogent argument with your first situation (there are some subtleties there that you omit, but it's basically correct modulo other uses for the energy). The second, however, is fundamentally inaccurate: > Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now. This is incorrect because a mining-based heater will be new and use electricity as its fuel source. You can't compare with an old electric heater because a replacement will obviously be new. You can't compare with hydrocarbon heaters, because you need to convert to electricity to run a computer. That means meaning we need to compare with a new electric heater. That comparison is unfavorable, however, because it will probably be based on a heat pump. Heat pumps have efficiency much greater than 100% (usually around 200%) by takng heat from the outside air or ground. A better example would be something like an electric oven, which typically does just use resistive heating. However, this sort of undermines the argument, since the energy spent on heating food isn't that much compared to things like residential and commercial heating.

dnautics 6y ago

"every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else" Not really? Batteries have limited capacity so at the point where the grid cannot buy any and your battery is topped up, you're mining bitcoin.

Blumfid 6y ago
And who will invest in batteries or other direct useful power usage if burning it through asic's is just making more money? No one :(
- scotty79 6y ago
  Bitcoin mining becomes less profitable the more people do it. At some point it gives you exactly as much as you pay for energy to mine. So if you can store electricity in the batteries for long enough to sell it for more than pruce of purchase then you are better off investing in the battery. But since batteries are expensive and inefficient, you might be better off investing in the wind turbine or solar panel and mine with it if you can't sell energy to the grid for more money. It's better than battery because when demand is high it gives energy, but it doesn't have to take energy when demand is low and it keeps itself financially afloat even when there's no high demand for a long time which might kill your battery energy storage enterprise. I know about at least one pumped storage facility that died because of that.

gruez 6y ago

> Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-priced during such periods. Clearly there aren't such worthwhile loads available, which is why the rates go negative in the first place. >pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening), Isn't this counter-productive? The middle of the day is also when the temperature is the hottest, so running AC full blast is also the most wasteful since it generates the biggest temperature gradient (and thus cooling loss).

fy20 6y ago
In terms of physics, no it doesn't make sense, it would consume less energy to turn it on when you get home (or set a timer for 30 mins before you get home). However electricity is usually the most expensive during the evening, and in places that have abundant solar, the cheapest during the day.
Blumfid 6y ago
That money should be used to invest in real energy storage and not burning it through asics and useless calculations.
- silveraxe93 6y ago
  Is that your money? The whole point of money is that who owns it decides where it should be used.
  - Blumfid 6y ago
    Yes let's ignore that I'm living on the same planet as you do and it doesn't affect myself and my family. Right? And no we don't live in a society where this doesn't matter. You are not allowed to do with your money whatever you want. Buying a hitman: illegal in most of the world. And you do understand that it is hypocritical to create a ton of co2 and making farming in other countries really hard and complaining later about immigrants. Just putting it in perspective

randomhodler84 6y ago

I consider a spending all these joules of energy on securing the bitcoin blockchain to be one of the most important things we can do to ensure the prosperity of the people of Earth - in the face of tyrants, fraudsters and central bankers.

erentz 6y ago

> that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. This applies to so many things. Snapchat data center? YouTube using gigawatts to process and stream cat videos? On and on. It’s really hard to control what people do with energy. Much better to focus on ensuring its priced correctly and all it’s externalities are properly included in that price. Then we don’t have to involve ourselves in moral debates about what’s a valid or invalid use.

riffraff 6y ago
The problem with that is that you have to get the whole planet to agree, or you're just shifting the problem to a different country.
- erentz 6y ago
  But does banning something do anything different? Say the USA bans Bitcoin mining due to concerns about its energy use. That doesn’t stop mining in China or elsewhere. On top of that the US now needs to set up an invasive investigation system for enforcing the ban within its own borders. Applies just as well to YouTube cat videos or any other poor use of energy in the digital realm. Banning YouTube in the USA doesn’t mean that China won’t have data centers streaming cat videos to the USA. Instead if the USA really was concerned about efficient use of energy and capturing the externalities it could extremely easily (in the scheme of things) work out a better pricing mechanism such as a CO2 tax, and implement it. If it were serious it would also be able to find many willing allies in Europe and elsewhere that would sign up to a multilateral treaty.
  - Blumfid 6y ago
    That would break bitcoin very fast. No american will continue to infest in bitcoin if the majority of miners is in china only
    - Nursie 6y ago
      But the majority of miners are already in China...

riffraff 6y ago

I think a more important objection is that increased demand for solar panels and batteries for bitcoin mining pushes up prices for those (edit: if bitcoin prices are above market price for electricity). It'd be "can't buu GPUs" all over again.

scotty79 6y ago
Pushing the price up makes manufacturing them more attractive which means more will be manufactured and we'll get to 100% solar sooner.

314 6y ago

Adding an elastic demand sink to a peaky supply in a way that is profitable is quite interesting. Joules that are not used at all are wasted. This converts that wasted generation into cash allowing expansion of the facilities and more Joules overall.

scotty79 6y ago
You can even drop the battery completely and keep the same dynamics.
Yizahi 6y ago
But it's not elastic. Or rather - it can be elastic theoretically but it will never be. If you have a cheap or even negative energy generation during peak generation hours and decide, hmm, I can run some hashing meanwhile without affecting demand. Ok, but then why would you turn off during peak demand hours? Why would you turn it off at any time? Why would anyone? It's still profitable, so everyone will run hashing 24/7. Just like today.

AYBABTME 6y ago

On boats with extra solar, running a dump load when batteries are full often happens by producing fresh water (desalination) or heating up water. If useful dump loads are available (pumped water?) then it's a good idea but bitcoin mining is better than nothing I guess. However having bitcoin mining as defacto dump load would probably demotivate work needed toward creating useful dump loads. I'm also wondering what incentives bitcoin as dump load would have in less wealthy regions where purchase power is no match to compete with BTC mining. Think of a world where most electricity is unaffordable to people, being wasted to hash some coins instead, because it's more "efficient" from a monetary standpoint.

Blumfid 6y ago
Independently of this, bitcoin will never run on just dump load energy.
- scotty79 6y ago
  Mining bitcoin is less profitable the more people do it. If a lot of miners mine on mostly dump load energy, minig on anything else becomes uncompetitive.

pyinstallwoes 6y ago

I joke, but I also do not. The inevitable conclusion of this path with bitcoin mining is the fastest path towards creating a black hole. It's the exactly perfect incentive structure to maximize speed towards a blackhole ecological disaster. Caveat on disaster: Unless blackholes aren't real, or they are something else entirely.

nathias 6y ago

and every Joule that was used somewhere else wasn't used for bitcoin mining

scotty79 6y ago

We don't have a problem that we lack Joules. What we lack is the reason for the rich to buy Joule generating capacity beyond what's absolutely necessary. And Bitcoin could provide that reason.

omarforgotpwd 6y ago

Negative priced power is a problem for the people who own the solar panels. They want to make a return on their investment. If the business case improves, renewable capacity will build out faster.

canadianfella 6y ago

I’m pretty sure mid-day California summers are peak demand.

thinkmassive 6y ago

There are some situations where mining Bitcoin is a very good application of energy that will otherwise be wasted. Here are two that come to mind: 1. Flared gas from oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of extracting oil from the Earth. In the past this was vented straight to the atmosphere, which is a huge waste of energy and causes horrible air pollution. Capturing this gas isn’t useful for many applications because it happens in remote areas, but if there’s a network connection it can be harnessed for mining Bitcoin. 2. Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now. Neither of these is specific to Bitcoin, because the general concept is running a computer at full load for an extended duration. Bitcoin mining just happens to be the most logical (and profitable) application of that concept at present.

bottled_poe 6y ago
I don’t mean to direct this at you individually (the sentiment is throughout these threads) - I can’t help but despair when a community of engineers lack the ability to come up with creative solutions for using surplus energy. There is always a better use of those energy sources than Bitcoin mining. Some ideas: Extracting co2 from air, electrolysis, desalination, etc.
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  As an engineer I find both ideas very innovative. Nobody is desalinating their own water at home using waste heat. Oil wells are often located in an area where it would make no sense to transport a bunch of water to desalinate (perhaps that's a good idea for sea-based wells though). I don't know enough about co2 extraction or electrolysis, only that those also don't sound like things people are likely to do at home.
amalcon 6y ago
I have no cogent argument with your first situation (there are some subtleties there that you omit, but it's basically correct modulo other uses for the energy). The second, however, is fundamentally inaccurate: > Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now. This is incorrect because a mining-based heater will be new and use electricity as its fuel source. You can't compare with an old electric heater because a replacement will obviously be new. You can't compare with hydrocarbon heaters, because you need to convert to electricity to run a computer. That means meaning we need to compare with a new electric heater. That comparison is unfavorable, however, because it will probably be based on a heat pump. Heat pumps have efficiency much greater than 100% (usually around 200%) by takng heat from the outside air or ground. A better example would be something like an electric oven, which typically does just use resistive heating. However, this sort of undermines the argument, since the energy spent on heating food isn't that much compared to things like residential and commercial heating.