3 ms·

> You are hilarious, your crypto hatred has clouded your judgement. Since you have so much karma here, you don't mind saying silly things and losing points left

> You are hilarious, your crypto hatred has clouded your judgement. Since you have so much karma here, you don't mind saying silly things and losing points left and right. First question, where do you think I got most of the karma? Sentiment here is broadly against crypto and has been for years (although it comes and goes). The pro side is loud, but enjoys far less support than you might imagine. > Transmission of power is expensive and lossy. No, it isn't. Transmission of power is super efficient. The EIA says the US lost only 5% of its electricity to T&D over the 2016-2020 period. [1] Expensive it may be, but that's not a reason not to do it. A single long power line from Boston to LA would only see ~25% loss from one end to the other. The whole Ohm's law thing (P=IV), we use transformers that are 99%+ efficient to raise the voltage to ~345kV and big fat wires to reduce current and resistance and hence transmission line losses. > That's also why we picked that area... power was cheap because it wasn't being used. It should be used to do something productive, not generate e-waste. > Our GPUs are 'new old stock'. They were already produced, sitting in warehouses not doing anything, and would have gone to waste anyway. Or, prices would have gone down and more people would have bought them. I can't see 3060s getting scrapped due to lack of demand when they were going for $850 a pop. [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3

latchkey 4y ago
> Sentiment here is broadly against crypto and has been for years. Agreed. However, I'd hope that 'against crypto' was less of one dude ranting endlessly, which is really boring and should get down voted. > Transmission of power is super efficient. We're not talking about efficiency. Transmission is expensive. Which goes beyond efficiency. You have to factor in the cost of the lines themselves, which are based on distance. I've seen these costs first hand, have you? > It should be used to do something productive, not generate e-waste. Oh yes, please define productive for me. > Or, prices would have gone down and more people would have bought them. They weren't for sale to the public. Nor would they ever have been. > I can't see 3060s getting scrapped due to lack of demand when they were going for $850 a pop. Huh? This whole thread is about RX4xx, which is what my cards are.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dumbfounder 4y ago
It’s the storage that’s the problem, not the transmission. Have talked with several in this business, their take is that it allows plants to have extra capacity to expand to meet peak needs, instead of flirting with disaster. Most plants are hard to spin up and down, so having an alternative way to monetize the energy creation is super important.
- latchkey 4y ago
  In the past, it was aluminum smelting pots, which can't go cold or they take a huge amount of effort to spin up again. They built huge dams just for this [0]. When those plants shut down, the power, which was transmitted directly to the plants, had nowhere to go. Sending it somewhere else requires building high voltage transmission towers, which is very expensive to build as well as maintain. Coinmint [1] took over the old Alcoa plant and is now pulling power from that dam. As it was explained to me by the head electrician when I visited, Coinmint is doing the dam a favor by having a constant draw of power to replace what was once the smelters. They also are paying for the electricity, which helps with maintenance of the dam, which is effectively a national resource. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam [1] https://www.coinmint.one/ https://www.coinmint.one/
- Reason077 4y ago
  > "It’s the storage that’s the problem, not the transmission... Most plants are hard to spin up and down" This is true for nuclear and some types of fossil-fuel power plants. But for hydro, all you have to do to vary the power output is adjust the amount of water running through the turbines. Plus, hydro plants that have their own storage lakes/dams have built-in storage: any water you're not using for generation can be saved in the lake for when it's needed. (OK, some rivers have minimum flow requirements so that fish don't die and water can be used downstream etc...)
Reason077 4y ago
> "A single long power line from Boston to LA would only see ~25% loss from one end to the other." It would actually be less than that using a modern HVDC transmission line. Losses for HVDC are around 3% per 1000 km of cable, and around 0.7% for the converter stations at each end. So around 15% loss for a theoretical Boston-to-LA HVDC.

latchkey 4y ago

> Sentiment here is broadly against crypto and has been for years. Agreed. However, I'd hope that 'against crypto' was less of one dude ranting endlessly, which is really boring and should get down voted. > Transmission of power is super efficient. We're not talking about efficiency. Transmission is expensive. Which goes beyond efficiency. You have to factor in the cost of the lines themselves, which are based on distance. I've seen these costs first hand, have you? > It should be used to do something productive, not generate e-waste. Oh yes, please define productive for me. > Or, prices would have gone down and more people would have bought them. They weren't for sale to the public. Nor would they ever have been. > I can't see 3060s getting scrapped due to lack of demand when they were going for $850 a pop. Huh? This whole thread is about RX4xx, which is what my cards are.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dumbfounder 4y ago

It’s the storage that’s the problem, not the transmission. Have talked with several in this business, their take is that it allows plants to have extra capacity to expand to meet peak needs, instead of flirting with disaster. Most plants are hard to spin up and down, so having an alternative way to monetize the energy creation is super important.

latchkey 4y ago
In the past, it was aluminum smelting pots, which can't go cold or they take a huge amount of effort to spin up again. They built huge dams just for this [0]. When those plants shut down, the power, which was transmitted directly to the plants, had nowhere to go. Sending it somewhere else requires building high voltage transmission towers, which is very expensive to build as well as maintain. Coinmint [1] took over the old Alcoa plant and is now pulling power from that dam. As it was explained to me by the head electrician when I visited, Coinmint is doing the dam a favor by having a constant draw of power to replace what was once the smelters. They also are paying for the electricity, which helps with maintenance of the dam, which is effectively a national resource. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam [1] https://www.coinmint.one/ https://www.coinmint.one/
Reason077 4y ago
> "It’s the storage that’s the problem, not the transmission... Most plants are hard to spin up and down" This is true for nuclear and some types of fossil-fuel power plants. But for hydro, all you have to do to vary the power output is adjust the amount of water running through the turbines. Plus, hydro plants that have their own storage lakes/dams have built-in storage: any water you're not using for generation can be saved in the lake for when it's needed. (OK, some rivers have minimum flow requirements so that fish don't die and water can be used downstream etc...)

Reason077 4y ago

> "A single long power line from Boston to LA would only see ~25% loss from one end to the other." It would actually be less than that using a modern HVDC transmission line. Losses for HVDC are around 3% per 1000 km of cable, and around 0.7% for the converter stations at each end. So around 15% loss for a theoretical Boston-to-LA HVDC.