3 ms·
To add, this isn’t really “surplus” energy that’s being consumed. There are fossil burning power plants running only to produce PoW, and unless mining operatio
by tass 5y ago
To add, this isn’t really “surplus” energy that’s being consumed.
There are fossil burning power plants running only to produce PoW, and unless mining operations shut down to allow a generator to operate at minimum load, they are forcing shared generators to run and dams to drain.
- paulmd 5y agoyou know that generator fuel consumption and dam water consumption is dependent on the load on the generator, right? it's not like a generator burns 2gal/hr no matter the load. This is easily observable even (perhaps especially) on home generators - if you run it idle it might run for 12 hours and if you load it to maximum capacity it might be out of fuel in 2 hours. look at a product page for a generator and will probably be specified at a particular load level (50% load for example). also if you keep pushing water through a dam at maximum rate even when the dam is under a light load, you'll overspeed the generator and blow it up. You have to have control gates to control the water flow. basically, "how difficult" it is to spin the generator is determined by the electrical load (coupled through the magnetic field of the motor) and obviously you need more physical power to spin against a stronger field, which translates into more power/fuel.
- tass 5y agoYeah, we are agreeing on this point. Most of it is not surplus - more usage, more fuel used. The only true surplus is if the water needed to flow anyway, or for something like nuclear power which has to stay active at some base load. Even so, there’s more useful potential uses like desalinisation or carbon capture.