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Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserve
by anonporridge 5y ago
Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time.
Bitcoin mining is commonly promoted as this kind of ideal electricity consumer. Hydrogen production could be another.
However, I think more interesting for this community would be to build some kind of demand response general computing datacenter. Basically, sell computing resources with poor availability guarantees, but at a cheaper rate than standard datacenters.
i.e. we'll run your batch jobs very cheaply, but we can't give you strong guarantees about how long it will take because we have to wait for excess grid electricity to have the energy to run them. Best case that's every night. Worst case we won't be able to run anything for weeks because Texas is going through another freak winter storm.
- Gare 5y ago> Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time. I think you misunderstood. The parent comment implied that excess electricity could be use to produce synthetic fuels (via carbon capture) to power conventional airplanes, ships or other machinery.
- anonporridge 5y agoI did misunderstand. Thanks!
- toast0 5y agoIf you have datacenters on multiple grids (and applications that are favorable to being moved around), you could direct traffic to where energy was abundant. This is not uncommon for large commercial sites; you can usually get a better rate from the utility if you commit to demand response, and it's not too hard to shift load if you're already doing multi-site for reliability/continuity)