Why don’t we store it and use it another time? Or we let other type of more meaning electricity demand do the load shifting?
Of course, if you are doing the computation for some vital services, it make sense to do VRE availability based demand side management as much as possible. But doing computation for some proof of work algorithm is basically computing for the sake of computing more, and I just cannot grasp the rationale behind it.
And this type of article reinforce the “too much renewable” myth. The problem is conventional power plants are still getting in the way and there is insufficient amount demand response and storage. The problem is not too much wind and solar.
Oh hey, that’s my specialization! I’m a programmer working on software for energy providers to control the power grid (both electric and gas), manage and plan incoming/outgoing energy as well as perform the legally required communications related to those tasks (calculations, reclamations etc.)
Long story short: this is a bullshit take. While yes, solar power does produce “too much” energy at certain times, most if not all countries in the world are still reliant on non-renewable energy during the night. The solution is not to piss away the solar power, it’s to store it for when it is needed.
The solution is not to piss away the solar power, it’s to store it for when it is needed.
Sounds reasonable, but shouldn’t businesses be allowed to make their own decisions how to use surplus power? Like mining, building storage capacity needs significant financial and other resources.
In the case of energy providers: no, absolutely not. As the power grid is a natural monopoly, the owners of that grid need to be strictly regulated. They are not “businesses” in the classical sense, as their actions have consequences that reach way further than any business decisions should.
Also, do you think energy providers don’t already have vast financial resources…?
You sure have a creative way of reading. No, I mean the power grid, the literal cables in the ground that distribute power. There is no alternative option to using them, thus they are a natural monopoly. The fact that non-government entities own them (at least here in Germany, maybe the rest of the world is better) is a problem, because they are not subject to market forces or market competition and are thus incompatible with free market principles.
What you have in mind is the energy market, which is a more or less fictional entity that is overlaid over the energy grid to emulate a free market on top of it. Although energy producers are free to “sell” their energy on the energy market, they are not allowed to “insider trade” by directly selling to anyone. They are also either heavily taxed on energy they decide to use themselves or fully forbidden from doing so. The reason for that is that such practices would disrupt the market in a way that hurts the actual humans that are the end-cosumers of the energy by raising the prices for no other reason than profiteering.
Energy Providers and Energy Producers are different entities. Energy Providers are the companies who own, maintain and build the Grid, while Energy Producers are the Companies making the energy. Energy Producers don’t invest in research beyond what is directly beneficial to them. (There’s also an intermediate management step called Bilanzkreisverwalter in German, idk what their English name would even be. They direct Energy Producers on a smaller scale.)
So, by “renewable energy startup” you mean something like a solar or wind park? Those businesses are free to sell their energy on the market for a fair and reasonable price. As far as I’ve talked to colleagues who work in such parks, their reality is that they make a reasonable profit and pay fair wages to their employees and contractors. I wouldn’t call them as vast as the resources that Energy Providers have, but they’re perfectly fine for average businesses. To be quite frank, buying some solar panels and putting them in a field isn’t exactly the most complicated or unique business plan. It’s surprisingly good income for how simple it is.
And nobody that invests in specialised mining chips is going to turn them off most of their life. They’re a huge capital investment that needs to be used within months before the next generation of chips is there.
They’ll typically just go to an area with cheap round the clock power, like near a dam or somewhere that has cheap fossil fuels.
Oddly enough, here in the UK prices tend to go negative at night on windy days. I make more money storing that and selling it back to the grid later by force charging/discharging my solar batteries than I ever would through crypto mining
What I hate the most about that take is that it is actually economically sound but ecologically terrible.
This type of takes that are missing the whole point is why I stopped trying to defend the few good thing about blockchain technologies (like the decentralization aspect). I do think they have a place in a solarpunk future, but the crypto-bros who think everything is about finance are really not helping the case.
At the first step of the reasoning you are thinking “Hey, how about my solar plant provides electricity for necessary functions most of the time and instead of wasting the additional energy, let’s mine cryptocoins during spikes”. And I agree. If you are right now having a solar installation that has spikes during the day that exceed the consumption, any flop you can use to generate hashes is basically free, economically and ecologically.
And you stop there thinking intermittence has been solved.
Thing is, to solve intermittence, we need more than that: we either need energy when it is not consumed produced or we need to adapt usage patterns to generation patterns (and ideally a mix of both). Thinking “that’s ok if I buy coal-based electricity during night because I can afford it thanks to my midday spike cryptocoins” makes sense economically but it also creates a disincentive at actually solving the intermittence problem.
Now imagine that on my incomplete solar installation I can now spend some money and time either for a second solar panel or for a battery setup. The battery would help me go through the night without the need for coal. The second solar panel would help me mine more crypto than I need to buy coal-based electricity during the night and I would actually turn a profit out of it! Et voila, you make it more costly to have a fully renewable solution.
Crypto is not green energy’s “best friend”, it is offering the seductive embrace of the angel of Death.
Thing is, to solve intermittence, we need more than that: we either need energy when it is not consumed
I guess you made a typo there, that is just more wasted energy?
or we need to adapt usage patterns to generation patterns (and ideally a mix of both).
Power consumption is already at the peak when renewable generation is at the peak, I fail to see your point here? This is actually exactly what mining can help with like the article explains, to increase consumption during peak production.
The second solar panel would help me mine more crypto than I need to buy coal-based electricity during the night
Buying “coal-based electricity” wouldn’t be economical, that’s kind of the whole point of the article.
Power consumption is already at the peak when renewable generation is at the peak
You consume a similar amount of energy during a sunny day and a cloudy day. You will need to overscale your installation to compensate for that and it leads to (a lot of) wasted power at peak in ideal conditions.
Buying “coal-based electricity” wouldn’t be economical, that’s kind of the whole point of the article.
For mining crypto yes, but heating my home at night takes electricity that I can buy from the grid or that I can store e.g. in a battery. If an additional solar panel allows me to mine 10 USD of crypto during daytime but intermittence forces me to buy 1 USD of electricity from the grid, that’s a sounder economical decision to do it than buy a battery that will actually lower my mining income (as part of the daytime energy will be used for charging).
You give an incentive to overproduce during peak hours and a disincentive to smoothen the intermittence.
Like I said, economically sound, ecologically terrible.
Let’s be clear: I do think it is not necessarily a bad idea for someone who wants to be energy independent to have an “energy-sink” like a mining rig that actually gives a small income, but that’s like saying it is better to resell your diesel car instead of letting it rot in your backyard. Yes, indeed, at an individual level, but in the grand scheme of things, it just makes the matter worse if this becomes normalized and an important part of the equation.
The peak of consumption and production match in time (not the rest of the curve though, there is a second peak at the end of the day, often at sunset) but not in value. If you match the value during a cloudy day, you probably outmatch it 3x on a sunny day.
The overproduction during peak hours IS because of renewables. If that’s a negative, should we just get rid of renewables?
The fact that you are even asking that question without realizing that renewables have a point besides running your fridge and mining crypto should tell you why you are downvoted here.
That’s a negative, we want to offset that without emitting CO2. Mining does not help with that and gives an incentive to make matters worse.
You don’t get it. Mining can react faster than any industry and can HELP to smoothen consumption.
You don’t get it. You don’t smoothen consumption when you give incentives to amplify peaks. You do the opposite.
You don’t get it: people here do not find crypto mining intrinsically valuable, so “I can’t run my fridge after sunset but at least I can power a mining rig during the day” is not an argument.
The fact that you are even asking that question without realizing that renewables have a point besides running your fridge and mining crypto should tell you why you are downvoted here.
Lol, are you really incapable of recognizing a rhetorical question? It’s cute that you tell me I can’t realize basic facts when you make errors in all of your reasoning.
You don’t get it. You don’t smoothen consumption when you give incentives to amplify peaks. You do the opposite.
Peak energy production -> low prices -> miners turn on Peak energy consumption -> high prices -> miners turn off
Are you trying to build a model in your mind where bitcoin miners run during peak energy consumption or what? That only works if there is STILL a surplus of cheap energy, so miners are, again, helping to use the excess which leads to a smooth power generation/consumption ratio.
Peak energy consumption and production -> low prices -> miners turn on
You don’t get it: people here do not find crypto mining intrinsically valuable
Oh no, I get that completely. People here suggested that boiling water was a better use of energy than bitcoin mining. Maybe I can get one person to see how insanely narrow minded that attitude is.
I’ll try one more time, but in my experience, explaining the same thing 3x never leads to constructive discussion.
Forget about peaks, apparently it confuses you. Just consider that: Renewables have intermittence: they will sometime produce more than we consume, and sometime not enough. “Smoothening” it means that you try to produce less when there is a surplus and more when there is a deficit. For instance, adding a battery to your system does that. Adding a mining rig that earns you money to reward you wasting energy creates incentives to waste even more. It raises the opportunity cost of smoothing the intermittence.
People here suggested that boiling water was a better use of energy than bitcoin mining. Maybe I can get one person to see how insanely narrow minded that attitude is.
Nice, a preacher!
Sending heat into space is a better use than giving values to bitcoins. High bitcoins value gives an incentive to sink energy into the BTC system. I was careful to talk about “crypto” in general as I think some blockchain applications are worthy, allow traceability, allow decentralization, but proof of work crypto needs to die.
My attitude is held by two types of people: those who don’t understand anything about crypto and people like me who have been into crypto long enough so that they remember mining BTC on CPUs and understand the underlying tech and its implications. You seem to be inbetween. I dont blame you, the scene is crowded with people who think they are geniuses because they understand a little bit what a hash is and a little bit what a currency is. But knowing enough CS to confuse an economist and enough economy to confuse a programmer is not enough to be either. And you are going to get some flak by attempting the same attitude in ecology.
I was careful to talk about “crypto” in general as I think some blockchain applications are worthy, allow traceability, allow decentralization, but proof of work crypto needs to die.
I understand completely that you’re incentivized to shill your shitcoin and are approaching this entire discussion with a closed mind and bad faith, you already admitted to that.
Sending heat into space is a better use than giving values to bitcoins.
You obviously made some mental gymnastics to believe that your shitcoin has value, and to believe that you have to believe that bitcoin has no value.
Your statements are entirely constructed without relating to the world.
Crypto assholes, always in search of the next bag-holder so they can funnel more wealth without having to do real work. And of course any wealth held in common is always a tempting target.
Tell me you know nothing about the current state of power storage technology without telling me you know nothing about the state of power storage technology.
This “tell me you … without telling me …” phrase often comes out of know-it-alls who at the same time as putting down others’ knowledge; come across as smug experts who have nothing better to say than to trot out this phrase.
I’m fully aware grid-scale storage has its challenges, but something as simple as heating water in a large boiler using excess capacity is more useful than mining crypto. Literally any other use is more useful to humanity than crypto.
Furthermore, practically giving that excess power to useless crypto farms will discourage investment in grid-storage which is something we desperately need.
Edit: After looking at your profile history, I’m banning/blocking you on my instance. So if you reply and I don’t, it’s both because I don’t care and won’t see the response anyway.
Edit: After looking at your profile history, I’m banning/blocking you on my instance. So if you reply and I don’t, it’s bot because I don’t care and won’t see the response anyway.
That’s fine, it’s enough if others can see how willfully ignorant you are.
We don’t have to make everything about profit, if a company can afford to operate and pay their employees a living wage they’re a success. They don’t need to make tons of extra money on top of that
They don’t need to make tons of extra money on top of that
Surplus can go into research, innovation, growing the business, etc. But I agree, they don’t NEED to do anything, they should be free to run their business however they want.
I think you need to update your thinkinghttps://octopus.energy/press/believe-it-or-watt-octopus-energy-customers-provide-108mw-of-grid-flexibility-in-first-saving-session-equivalent-of-a-gas-power-station/ - this is from a year ago, things have got bigger since then with more customers making cash through using their solar batteries in forced charge/discharge mode.
They can just invest in grid batteries and other storage options themselves. This is way more profitable that giving the electricity nearly for free to crypto-gamblers.
Especially because in practice the massive cost of compute means that while low cost power is nice, it is always more economically sound from the miners prospective to run 24/7 to get the best return on investment. Indeed if you only ran your expensive data center for the few hours a day where solar production can even meet demand than you would never break even.
All of this means that miners in practice have to demand all that power 24/7, and thusly demand either more storage or more fossil production than would otherwise be necessary for the grid. As such crypto mining is not incentivizing a move to renewables but forestalling it.
If nothing else hydrogen is pitifully easy to produce from power, and current non-fossil hydrogen production is nowhere near enough to fulfill current demand, let alone what we’ll need in the next decades. Better yet, because the machinery needed to make hydrogen is so cheap compared to the electricity necessary, it actually makes financial sense to only run them when there is spare renewable capacity as compared to constantly.
Yeah, I’ve been wondering if instead of batteries homes could have their own electrolysis + fuel cell setup. Which one would be able to store more energy for a certain footprint?
Probably not, while hydrogen production is simple enough by industrial standards, in practice a small hydrogen plant is still the size of a shipping container thanks to the need to reach cryogenic temperatures for decent density and like nearly all very complex industrial kit requires expert maintenance. It also has to deal with practical limitations on round trip efficiency and such that make it hard to scale down to the size where it would be useful for a home or small business.
By contrast LFP or sodium ion batteries and inverters have no moving parts or seals to lubricate and replace or else the building explodes, no real maintenance needs, are far more energy dense, and offer more burst capacity than a fuel cell can.
While it may be viable for grid scale storage, though given most practical proposals involve combustion turbines and get half the energy out you put in I’m skeptical they can compete with more efficient methods like pumped hydro, batteries, and long distance transmission, at least for home use I can’t see hydrogen being practical anytime soon.
The real value in green hydrogen is for industrial uses like fertilizer production, ship fuel, and such, not in consumer applications.
Especially because in practice the massive cost of compute means that while low cost power is nice, it is always more economically sound from the miners prospective to run 24/7 to get the best return on investment.
If you wanted a market solution, you could push wholesale power pricing onto miners so the cost potentially becomes too expensive to mine at times there isn’t renewable energy. Not that I think power should be wasted on crypto mining in any case.
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