5 ms·

Unfortunately it’s still way, way less efficient than other heating systems like heat pumps This also doesn’t address the wasted materials and labor used to ma

by elil17 5y ago

Unfortunately it’s still way, way less efficient than other heating systems like heat pumps This also doesn’t address the wasted materials and labor used to make the chips.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
I dont think heat pumps work in sibearian winter of -40
- vidanay 5y ago
  F or C? /s
- throw0101a 5y ago
  The limits seems to be -25C/-15F, and I'm guessing that's because of the refrigerant that generally used in residential HVAC (R-410A?).
lordofgibbons 5y ago
> Unfortunately it’s still way, way less efficient than other heating systems like heat pumps That's not necessarily always the case. There's a threshold where the delta between the outside ambient temperature and desired indoor temperature is too large, it becomes more efficient to use something like resistive heating rather than a heat-pump
beiller 5y ago
Not really. Heat pumps can't be used in cold climates due to ice forming on heat fins which breaks the efficiency. It's why we use a lot of baseboard heaters in Canada. Bitcoin mining would be perfect for electric heating of homes here. Plus the added bonus of eliminating green house gas emissions from burning natural gas in a furnace (how my house is heated). The problem with baseboard is that gas heating is far cheaper than electric. So could Bitcoin actually be used to make the world greener?
- minitoar 5y ago
  In cold climates you bury the heat exchanger under the frost line.
  - beiller 5y ago
    That sounds really interesting but isn't that useless because at that point you may as well use geothermal. Doesn't the exchanger need air to flow over it hence the fins for it to work? I think geothermal is the biggest win environmentally however so there is that.
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      In most places, "geothermal" is just a "ground sourced heat pump". Circulate a liquid underground so that it keeps that 50-degree temperature, run a heat exchange with that as the source instead of the air. (In other places and to a larger extent pop culture, "geothermal" refers to tapping into actual heat sources underground.)
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > So could Bitcoin actually be used to make the world greener? No. The value of a PoW coin is based on the wasted electricity. If mining does something useful (like heating) for a large fraction of the miners the mining difficulty will go up to adapt to such change, requiring additional mining. At the end of the amount of wasted electricity will remain the same.
  - beiller 5y ago
    I think you need to research more. A computer is actually a heater that is 100% efficient. If you actually "waste electricity" to do useless computation, you still get 100% efficient heat output. 1000W of electricity pumped through your cpu is outputting 1000W of heat as well. Maybe imagine if your logic gates in your computer is water powered. You could still drink the water after it did it's computation.

by elil17 5y ago

Unfortunately it’s still way, way less efficient than other heating systems like heat pumps This also doesn’t address the wasted materials and labor used to make the chips.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

I dont think heat pumps work in sibearian winter of -40

vidanay 5y ago
F or C? /s
throw0101a 5y ago
The limits seems to be -25C/-15F, and I'm guessing that's because of the refrigerant that generally used in residential HVAC (R-410A?).

lordofgibbons 5y ago

> Unfortunately it’s still way, way less efficient than other heating systems like heat pumps That's not necessarily always the case. There's a threshold where the delta between the outside ambient temperature and desired indoor temperature is too large, it becomes more efficient to use something like resistive heating rather than a heat-pump

beiller 5y ago

Not really. Heat pumps can't be used in cold climates due to ice forming on heat fins which breaks the efficiency. It's why we use a lot of baseboard heaters in Canada. Bitcoin mining would be perfect for electric heating of homes here. Plus the added bonus of eliminating green house gas emissions from burning natural gas in a furnace (how my house is heated). The problem with baseboard is that gas heating is far cheaper than electric. So could Bitcoin actually be used to make the world greener?

minitoar 5y ago
In cold climates you bury the heat exchanger under the frost line.
- beiller 5y ago
  That sounds really interesting but isn't that useless because at that point you may as well use geothermal. Doesn't the exchanger need air to flow over it hence the fins for it to work? I think geothermal is the biggest win environmentally however so there is that.
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    In most places, "geothermal" is just a "ground sourced heat pump". Circulate a liquid underground so that it keeps that 50-degree temperature, run a heat exchange with that as the source instead of the air. (In other places and to a larger extent pop culture, "geothermal" refers to tapping into actual heat sources underground.)
goodpoint 5y ago
> So could Bitcoin actually be used to make the world greener? No. The value of a PoW coin is based on the wasted electricity. If mining does something useful (like heating) for a large fraction of the miners the mining difficulty will go up to adapt to such change, requiring additional mining. At the end of the amount of wasted electricity will remain the same.
- beiller 5y ago
  I think you need to research more. A computer is actually a heater that is 100% efficient. If you actually "waste electricity" to do useless computation, you still get 100% efficient heat output. 1000W of electricity pumped through your cpu is outputting 1000W of heat as well. Maybe imagine if your logic gates in your computer is water powered. You could still drink the water after it did it's computation.