How about just building a simple compost heap under the heatpump and using the hot air generated by that to ease the energy needs?
I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
301–310 of 419 posts
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#3021. At an individual/hobbyist level this is a fine thing to do, if one is already a cryptocurrency enthusiast. 2. At a social/planning level it is important to remember that opportunity costs matter, and this should not be recommended as public policy. One kWh of electricity could either be used for mining bitcoin (creating at most one kWh of indoor heat), or it could be used for running a heat pump[*], yielding multi…
Definition of efficiency (from Google): the ratio of the useful work performed by a machine or in a process to the total energy expended or heat taken in. Heat pumps are >100% efficient. Usually, we cannot convert all input energy into useful work, so efficiency is always 100% efficiency.
> or heat taken in.
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#303I did this in an apartment I lived in years ago, and do it now in my house. My computer room in the house is the lowest point in the house, so naturally, it tends to be a couple degrees cooler than the upstairs. This means that if I set the thermostat so that the computer room is comfortable, the bedroom is too warm. If I run the house circulation fan constantly, it's not an issue, but that consumes a decent amount o…
Aren't you concerned with hardware degradation with your GPU running at 100% most of the time?
The main causes of degradation in electronics are usually material failure due to thermal stress (cycles of expansion and contractor weaken the electrical pathways, resistance goes up, that causes more stress etc.) and electromigration due to over-voltage (the flux of electrons induces a shift in the position of the atoms it goes through).
Considering mining is a constant load (not much thermal stress) and improving efficiency requires lowering the voltage those aren't really concerns. There's far less risk than overclocking a GPU for gaming. The only electrical part that may be of concern would be the voltage regulation, but that's still an outlier as long as cooling is adequate.
Fans are know to fail because they're ran at high speeds all the time, but they're a commodity.
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flipside, if you have a CPU and you can't keep it pegged 100% of the time, are you wasting resources?
No, because a CPU isn't a consumable resource, like electricity or labor. You should occupy the CPU with all valuable work (for whatever definition of value) but keeping it pegged for no reason makes no sense, and just wastes electricity.
In a way, by not running useful work 100% of the time, you're wasting the resource of time.
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the $ cost of the power?
Is there any cost analyze for using solar panel power for Crypto? I am installing Solar from Tesla, wonder if I should just use the external power generated for crypto than to send them back to PG&E.
Since you can make money mining crypto paying for power, and the power company pays you less than they charge, or course using it for crypto makes financial sense.
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
About $20-25/month. But it's not as if the cost of power is wasted. It's generating heat which I desire. If my GPU is consuming 300W, then that's 300W of heat that my heater doesn't have to generate.
Electric resistive heating is the worst form of heating, though - heat pumps are something like 3-4x the heat per kwh used. So not totally wasted, but a much worse way to get heat into your house, if that's your goal.
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Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#307This makes sense unless you have the option of natural gas heating, then not so much.
You could run a gas generator to power the miners and all of the waste heat could still heat your home.
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#308How about just building a simple compost heap under the heatpump and using the hot air generated by that to ease the energy needs?
Added feature is the smell and rats.
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#309My mining rig will stay profitable until the ETH price is at ~900$. Or until Ethereum will switch to "Proof of Stake"?
So forever?
Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electricity doesn't have to be a bad option for heating. Norway gets 88% of it's electricity through hydropower, another 10% through wind, and the rest of it is geothermal, as an example. That doesn't mean that electricity is necessarily the most efficient option, or the cheapest, but it is clean.
That's awesome, but it's too bad they financed the construction of all that green energy through the sale of oil, which is obviously being burned.
I don't think this is entirely true. A lot of the modern "green industry" stuff in Norway is funded by the oil industry. However, the hydropower industry in Norway is way older than the oil industry and is quite economical on its own.