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Texas paid Bitcoin miner Riot $31.7M to shut down in August
- hindsightbias 3y agoI'll predict the west Texas wind turbines will be blamed, just like the winter freeze that caused the gas plants to fail.
- 71a54xd 3y agoThis is how energy contracts work. If a utility opts to break a contract made prior to ensure grid stability and to mitigate risk to more residential customers terms sometimes dictate that the settlement will be made in dollars or energy credits... I'm not a fan of bitcoin mining but this is just business. No reason to trounce maniacally on Texas...
- whoknew1122 3y agoYes, it is a reason to trounce on Texas. Texas wouldn't have to go around paying bitcoin miners not to mine if it was integrated into the rest of the power grid(s). But Texas is gonna Texas. Lifelong Texan here.
- tw04 3y ago> If a utility opts to break a contract made prior to ensure grid stability I think what you meant to say is: the utility should not be allowed to EVER sign a contract that allows something as silly as bitcoin to preempt providing power to citizens and vital businesses. Energy isn't a commodity, it's a necessity in 2023 and should be treated as such.
- rexpop 3y ago> The agency also counts on bitcoin miners to soak up excess power when there’s too much supply, keeping prices in check. And how does the Texas public benefit from this? Is "to soak up excess power" really that valuable?
- Bjartr 3y agoAIUI, turning on a dormant power plant is an expensive process, but utilities need to be careful to balance the amount of power they put into the network is close to the amount of power being consumed or "bad things will happen™" If the power draw is fluctuating around a level where one more power plant needs to be on during the high demand, but is is low enough during low demand for it to be dangerous to keep the plant running, it can be cheaper to just "soak up the extra" than to cycle the whole plant on and off.
- htrp 3y ago> it can be cheaper to just "soak up the extra" than to cycle the whole plant on and off. hence why nat gas peakers are so valuable.
- cheaprentalyeti 3y ago[flagged]
- tstrimple 3y agoSince when do the feds have anything to do with Texas peaker plants? Texas was unable to fire their gas peaker plants because they didn't bother winterizing them and the equipment froze. That's one of the reason Texas maintains a separate grid. They didn't want to follow fed recommendations for winterizing their power production. This is entirely on Texas. https://acee.princeton.edu/acee-news/andlinger-center-speaks-the-texas-freeze-and-widespread-energy-system-failures/ https://acee.princeton.edu/acee-news/andlinger-center-speaks... > Freeze-offs, or when natural gas wellheads and pipelines freeze, reduced the supply and rate of supply of natural gas and forced large numbers of the gas plants offline due to lack of access to the fuel source. Often times home heating systems, including common natural gas-powered furnaces, require electricity to run, so even residents that may have been lucky enough to have gas supply could not heat their homes. In many cases, residents were unable to stay warm, cook food, or boil water. > The conditions compromised every power source. Coal plants that shut down likely struggled with frozen coal piles where operators could not feed the coal into the plant or access unfrozen water for cooling. One of the state’s four nuclear reactors went offline for about 36 hours due to a frozen sensor on a water feed line.
- 404mm 3y ago“Fun fact”, Texas grid came really close to (another) controlled shutdowns last night. We had about 1,200MW in operating reserves. https://www.ercot.com/news/release/2023-09-06-ercot-has-initiated https://www.ercot.com/news/release/2023-09-06-ercot-has-init... Same is expected for tonight.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoRelated thread & discussion from earlier today: Texas just got closer to blackouts than it has since 2021. What happened? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37419220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37419220
- 404mm 3y agoThanks. Based on Supply and Demand forecast, we’re going to be looking at as low as 600MW operating reserves between 7:45-8-15. That may trigger Level 3
- alyandon 3y agoMight happen tonight. Forecasts aren't looking good - https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards
- predictabl3 3y ago[dead]
- resuresu 3y agoEthereum accomplishes the same thing without using the power of a small country.
- eniotna 3y agoIt doesn't, proof of work is what makes Bitcoin unique. (1) Having to spend physical resources better aligns incentives (2) Proof of work is decentralized and fair It's a worthwhile tradeoff.
- mrguyorama 3y agoProof of work explicitly gives those with more resources more power. How is that "fair"? Bitcoiners complain that staking systems are somehow worse, but it's the exact same dynamic, just one uses less electricity.
- DANmode 3y agoBTC doesn't purport to fix "dog-eat-dog" or "might is right" in human society, but does "fix" governments being able to manipulate the value, supply etc of money.
- MerelyMortal 3y agoWhat makes it unique is the name recognition. It wasn't the first project to use proof of work, and it wasn't the last either.
- gardenhedge 3y agoWhat was the first?
- e9 3y agoGold etc You have to apply physical work to dig it out etc
- 3y ago
- supportengineer 3y agoHave many Texans started generating/storing their own power since the last big outage?
- HPMOR 3y agoNo.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- qbxk 3y agoI know you'll all call me crazy, but this is the system working at its finest Riot, by simply existing and pursuing their mission to mine bitcoin, provides a valuable service by discovering the real price a kWh should cost. Since Riot will never overpay for electricity, (they'll simply scale back their use) and they'll happily gobble up as much as they can when electricity is "too cheap" they ensure that the amount of generation is constantly matched to the demand, adjusting for every conceivable variable in an economy in real-time. ERCOT and the consumers of the Texas grid also benefit from this hyper-efficient cost discovery system, every single second of every single day. It's not just better than the stock market, it's capitalistic principles working exactly they way they've always dreamt of.
- sgnelson 3y agoI feel like I could make a pretty good analogy about an arsonist burning down houses and how that would be a great way to create a hyper-efficient market that would tell us the true cost of housing, insurance, construction supplies and labor, etc. ie, your opinion sounds a lot like the the broken window fallacy. But I don't worship the market above all, and I'm of the opinion that any type of system (capitalism, socialism, whatever) exists to serve the needs of a society, not to be a system in it's own right to serve it's own "needs" (whatever those may be.) But I also think there's a strong argument to be made that mining bitcoin is not a net benefit for society.
- RugnirViking 3y ago" the consumers of the Texas grid also benefit from this hyper-efficient cost discovery system" I can't understand how someone that only serves to drive up the price benefits anyone except the power companies
- qbxk 3y agoby setting a floor on the price, and minimum for demand, they guarantee predictable revenues to those seeking to invest in or expand their power generating capabilities
- 3y ago
- meetingthrower 3y agoCould I create an energy sink (huge space heater?), that only turns on right when the grid is about to fail, and then get paid not to run it?
- ephbit 3y agoI'd guess "huge space heater" would certainly have to exceed 250 MW (that's at least 100,000 kettles). IIRC that'd equal vaporizing water at 125 kg/s, doable but that's 10,800 m³ water per day. Aaaand, in order to get the kind of contract from a power utility where they pay you to turn off, you'd probably need to operate a decent fraction of the day, say 25 %. So you'd first need to build this thing and then you'd need to draw 1.5 GWh of electricity per day. At 50 USD/MWh, you'd pay USD 27 million a year for the electricity to operate. Not sure this'll work out financially.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoAnd you can smelt metal with it as well! It is likely that it would be cost prohibitive to hookup that much load with that expected profile.
- zakariya_og 3y ago[dead]
- kwar13 3y agoFun fact: power prices can and frequently do go negative, since electricity can't be stored (cheaply and at scale) and the plants cost more to shut down and restart.
- singhrac 3y agoBitcoin advocates talk about the cash flows sponsoring new generation capacity, but everyone ignores the fact that bitcoin plants are being built in areas with low power prices, so they are necessarily less valuable to the grid than next-to-regular-load. Almost all Bitcoin plants in Texas (except Riot) are in West Texas, next to solar farms that are transmission line limited.