5 ms·
I'm a little conflicted here. On the one hand ramping these Bitcoin operations up and down helps smooth out demand for power which helps the grid. On the othe
by ars 4y ago
I'm a little conflicted here.
On the one hand ramping these Bitcoin operations up and down helps smooth out demand for power which helps the grid.
On the other hand it feels like such a waste to use power for this.
Bitcoin seems like a great lesson in what happens when supply is constrained. Demand is what it is, and prices go up which incentivizes more people to mine and more miners means more difficulty and more difficulty means more power usage.
A lesson for people trying to control climate change by controlling supply.
- rdtwo 4y agoIn many cases the excess power is nearly free it’s like excess bandwidth capacity when you size for peak. The rest of the time it just sits idle
- toomuchtodo 4y agoAs long as miners ramp when ERCOT would've otherwise curtailed renewables (throwing that power away), I see no problem with their consumption. Using EIA generation mix data (which sites like electricitymap.org consume), it's straightforward to determine the carbon intensity of your current and forward looking electrical consumption and modify your operations accordingly (Google does this for datacenter workloads using electricitymap.org, for example). https://btuanalytics.com/power-and-renewables/wind-and-solar-curtailments-in-ercot/ https://btuanalytics.com/power-and-renewables/wind-and-solar... https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-TEX-ERCO?wind=false&solar=false https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-TEX-ERCO?wind=false&...