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I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

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Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#311

Post by Nition »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #300
seniorsassycat wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A heat pump in a −273 °C space will convert electricity to heat at a 1:1 ratio. If you count the heat taken from the space around the condenser, which you should based on Google's definition, heat pumps are only 100% efficient. Calling heat pumps >100% efficient is like calling my solar water heater >100% efficient. True if you only count the electrical input, and not other sources of energy.

You will be pleased to know that the majority of heat pumps are installed in homes whose exteriors stay above 0 kelvin year round. Also, in what I assume is an efficiency feature, most heat pumps do not allow operation in a zero Kelvin environment. Also, to nit pick: Kelvins are not degrees and do not use a ° sign.

Damn, I've been looking for a zero Kelvin heat pump that works in a vacuum to heat my spherical cows.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#312

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

salawat wrote: post #296
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #264

Earlier 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.

You're still maximizing power generation demand. That makes environmental issues worse even if it does make fiscal sense. You aren't "using power tgat would go to waste anyway". All power is JIT. It makes a difference.

> You aren't "using power tgat would go to waste anyway".

That's not what I said.

I'm not "using power that would go to waste anyways", I'm generating heat that I would have needed anyways.

In other words, I need to add a little bit of heat to this room. I can either run a small space heater on Low and consume about 300W and get nothing but 300W of heat, or I can mine crypto and consume around 300W, generate the heat I wanted, and earn about $200/month on top of it.

In either case, I'm consuming 300W. I might as well make money in the process.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#313

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

ericd wrote: post #285
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #264

Earlier 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.

Fair enough, but my goal isn't to heat my whole house, just add a little bit to this one room.

My whole house is heated with gas anyways, which AFAIK is more efficient than a heat pump, or at least, is more cost-effective.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#314

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #279
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #49

I 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…

I would really like to try NiceHash, but the fact that I have to add it as an exception to Windows Defender antivirus, and that one of the founders has previously been convicted [0] and served time for writing botnet malware, really gives me pause. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiceHash

Windows Defender flags all crypto miners. It is not unique to NiceHash. You don't have to add an exception for the whole NiceHash directory for it to work, but it makes it easier. NiceHash updates the miners occasionally, and if you don't add an exception for the whole directory, then every time a miner gets an update, it's disabled by Windows Defender until you manually allow it.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#315

Post by xfitm3 »

Tired of the environmental rhetoric. This person heats their home and profits. They already have a heat pump and has REDUCED the overall energy consumption.

> Success! I was able to lower my heat pump's electricity needs by ~50% and half of the costs are also paid for by the mining earnings

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#316

Post by r00fus »

robocat wrote: post #262
hnuser123456 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France's electricity is largely generated by nuclear power which has minimal CO2 emissions.

True, but very misleading. When you add a marginal kWh of electricity usage, how is that extra 1 kWh generated? If France runs its nuclear power at nearly 100% utilisation, then if you add 1 kWh usage then that power comes from another source, which could be a high CO2 emitter. The same goes for hydroelectricity: if all the hydroelectric power is already being utilised (no spillway), then you cannot claim that your e…

Your entire assumption is that France nuclear is at 100% utilization. While utilization%s aren't publicly available, from this graph on Wikipedia about TWh produced [1], you can see that Nuclear has upside capacity, and was probably never 100% utilized (it's the main baseload, thus the biggest buffer option).

So the assumption that any marginal utilization is non-nuclear is flawed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France#/media/File:F...

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#318

Post by mtone »

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #279
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #49

I 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…

I would really like to try NiceHash, but the fact that I have to add it as an exception to Windows Defender antivirus, and that one of the founders has previously been convicted [0] and served time for writing botnet malware, really gives me pause. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiceHash

Nicehash (the app) is a convenience tool to manage miner executables -- it's mostly those that are flagged by AVs. You can connect most miner executables to Nicehash (the service) or other pools directly, and some are open-source.

For instance I GPU mine with https://github.com/ethereum-mining/ethminer and CPU mine with https://github.com/xmrig/xmrig, both built from source and I don't use Nicehash (the app). But I haven't looked at the source, so at some point I'm still trusting someone.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#319

Post by lostmsu »

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #279
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #49

I 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…

I would really like to try NiceHash, but the fact that I have to add it as an exception to Windows Defender antivirus, and that one of the founders has previously been convicted [0] and served time for writing botnet malware, really gives me pause. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NiceHash

Self-ad: check mine (which is also conveniently called Mine). https://losttech.software/Downloads/Mine/

I am considering to add a feature, that would pause when external sensor reports high temperature. But you can already hack around that by creating a background window titled "DON'T MINE" and setting the tool to stop when it sees it.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#320

Post by mtagius »

xfitm3 wrote: post #315

Tired of the environmental rhetoric. This person heats their home and profits. They already have a heat pump and has REDUCED the overall energy consumption. > Success! I was able to lower my heat pump's electricity needs by ~50% and half of the costs are also paid for by the mining earnings

I think there is a misunderstanding here. His overall energy consumption has gone up, it is only the heat pump the uses ~50% less power now. His home overall used more electricity than when he started because any saved electricity is used to power the miners.

This is corroborated by xenocyon's comment: "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 multiple kWh of indoor heat due to the magic of heat pumps and their >100% 'efficiency'"

At the end of the day only the costs of heating were reduced, not the overall electricity usage. I'll admit, this mining setup is far more efficient than most because they use solar power in the summer and in the winter miner heat is used to reduce power needs for the heat pump, but there would be an increase in global electricity usage if this were more popular.

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