OPINION | Cryptocurrency mining could provide electricity demand when prices would otherwise dip to zero or negative, helping renewable energy sources remain pr
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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Fixed the typo.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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 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. 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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
deleted by creator
Start by understanding your interlocutors statements, then you may have hope at having a shot understanding their opinions.