Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

blog.haschek.at

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 419 posts

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#71

Post by cgufus »

I'm not sure I understand the principle.

A heat pump achieves a COP (coefficient of performance) of approx. 3-4 (e.g. by investing 1 kWh of electricity, a heat pump generates 3-4 kWh of heat by extracting from the surroundings, air or sole, 2-3 kWh). In this example, by pre-heating the air, you supply the heat pump with ~0.9 kWh of thermal energy (the miner will convert 900 watt directly to heat I would assume). So instead of 1 kWh of electricity consumption from the heatpump, you have 1 kWh of electricity for the heat pump, plus 0.9 kWh for the mining, and you end up with a bit more than 3-4 kWh (since the COP of a heat pump increases if the source temperature is higher).

So in a nuthsell: before: in 1 kWh, out 3-4 kWh after: in 1.9 kWh, out 3.5 - 4.5 kWh

so you lose 0.4 kWh?

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#72

Post by perryizgr8 »

inter_netuser wrote: post #47
lmilcin wrote: post #10

I wonder if we could make it even better and make smart heaters that instead of wasting calculations actually do something useful, something like folding proteins or some other computing load that doesn't require huge network load and can be easily distributed (something like SETI@home but actually useful). In densely populated cities we could bury huge datacenters underground and use that energy for heating directly…

It is not wasted. This is the most common misunderstanding on this forum. Miners are required to provable expend effort in order to become eligible to produce a block. 2nd law of thermodynamics as core security mechanism, as it cannot be reversed. If you were to improve efficiency by routing excess heat for other purposes, it will gradually spread across the entire mining industry, and eventually you end up right whe…

> 2nd law of thermodynamics as core security mechanism

LOL... this is the most ridiculous claim I've heard about crypto-mining yet. Might as well buy a truck-full of wine glasses, break them and use the shards of broken glass to prove that I've "expended effort". Now we're using the asymmetry of time itself as a security mechanism. Come to think of it, that may be actually less wasteful than burning the electricity to mine Bitcoin.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#74

Post by lmilcin »

innocenat wrote: post #58
lmilcin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I said Data Center can produce electricity I did not mean that it can produce as much or more than it takes in. I thought this obvious enough that it did not have to be said. But alas, it has to be said. No, you can't create perpetuum mobile ie. build a machine that given a supply of energy produces as much or even more energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetuum_mobile

It is still not viable. Assume your datacenter runs at 50C (122F) and the temperature outside is -40C (-40F), using the datacenter heat to generate electricity has theoretical maximum efficiency of 27.85%. If your datacenter is at 23C (73F) and room temp is 0C (32F), then the theoretical maximum is 7.77%. Note the word 'theoretical maximum', in reality probably at least 10 times worse than that.

You assume DCs are cooled by the whole volume of air inside when in fact you can put heat pipes on components and get closer to 70-90 degrees heat source. Even years ago when I worked in datacenters the air was circulated from outside to the server rack and then back outside, never crossing from the rack into server room.

Newer generations of CPUs are going to be exchange less frequently but will produce more energy as they offer more dense computing. This makes case for investing more in the server hardware.

Even then understand, that 7% of a huge amount of energy is still huge amount of energy.

Edit: Apparently "Facebook datacenter in Denmark is supplying around 10.000 homes with heating" -- source, another poster.

So... you need to rethink your expertise on defining what is and what is not viable.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#75

Post by amenod »

speedgoose wrote: post #14
audunw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the article? He does have a heat pump. He just uses mining to pre-heat the air, reducing the energy consumption of the heat-pump when the weather is cold. When it gets really cold, heat pumps can lose some of their efficiency, so in that case this might not be much worse than just relying on the heat-pump itself. It's still not a net-gain environmentally speaking, I guess, but since he uses GPUs he…

He isn't using a heatpump. It's too expensive he says.

> Success! I was able to lower my heat pump's electricity needs by ~50%

(didn't downvote you, just pointing out that you missed the point of the article)

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#76

Post by acomjean »

neilalexander wrote: post #32
bayindirh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to Qarnot. https://qarnot.com/en/the-radiator-computer/

> The computing-heater warms buildings ecologically and for free, thanks to the waste heat released by embedded microprocessors. By performing complex IT operations... ... which are what, exactly?

Im not sure what it’s doing but “folding@home” is doing biology simulations as it’s useful distributed computing, that can probably generate some warmth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#77

Post by [deleted] »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #50
rypskar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several useful BOINC-projects, for protein folding you have https://foldingathome.org/ , the projects mine computers use most time on are the projects at https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org . You can find lists of projects at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/projects.php and https://www.boincstats.com/page/projectPopularity . Interesting idea to combine it with larger heating than to heat a room or two. Many will…

> Many will probably argue that it is an ineffective way to create heat. Electrical heating is as close to 100% efficient as you can get. Every watt your computer uses ends up as heat. Generating those watts from non-renewable sources is much less efficient though. I wonder if it's possible to calculate when the benefit of contributing to BOINC projects outweighs the CO2 generated.

[deleted]

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#78

Post by timdaub »

illustriousbear wrote: post #73

The thing I find funny about HackerNews is how you see plenty of wasteful hobby projects hit the main page. Yet someone using a crypto miner to generate heat / side money is somehow a terrible project.

> terrible project

I think that's a terrible comment. I salute everyone that tries to make the incredible inefficient third law of thermodynamics more efficient.

Sure, you can say that crypto mining is superfluid. But so is all human invented technology to a degree. I rather have someone building a cool heating system than enormous data centers wasting it.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#80

Post by oaiey »

speedgoose wrote: post #22
freetime2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second paragraph begins with: > My house is heated (and cooled) with a central ventilation system powered by a heat pump. He is definitely using a heat pump.

He has an advanced ventilation system but what he describes is not a heat pump.

Might be a German to English thingy. The German word "Wärmepumpe" is IMHO applied to both concept in general usage.
Post reply on HN