401–410 of 419 posts
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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.
Good thing they wrote −273 °C and not "0 °K".
How about don't heat your home with electricity? It's stupid and expensive. Use natural gas. There's a reason no one uses electricity for heating in cold climates.
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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/E…
Rather than an unrelated graph on Wikipedia, try looking at for example electricityMap:: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/FR What you'll see there is as you'd expect if you understand how fission power plants work and how economics works for electricity supply. The nuclear plants may not be running at what is notionally 100% nameplate power output but they are not in fact being used as a "buffer option" very much.…
Of course, immediately your marginal power will be by gas turbine. However if power increases overall, wouldn't sustained power usage force an increase nuclear baseload? The overall GW output of nuclear has varied YoY substantially.
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Good thing they wrote −273 °C and not "0 °K".
Pretty sure they edited it.
Edit: Apparently I'm completely wrong. Carry on and I'll eat my downvotes with aplomb.
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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/E…
1. Have a quick quick look at https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/FR and scroll down to “Electricity production in the last 24 hours” on the left. Natural gas was used from about 7pm to 5am. If you heat your house in France using crypto during those hours, you are using up to 100% non-renewable peaker gas (ignoring hydro because it is even more complicated as per previous comment).
2. France exports a lot of electricity, so it is quite possible for your marginal increase in usage within France to cause a decrease in exported electricity, which leads to a marginal increase in non-renewables in another country... i.e. your extra load causes an increase in world CO2 production.
I think you are making the same mistake that I am trying to illustrate... understanding marginal usage is difficult and most people jump to conclusions that are not factual.
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 i…
So if the heat pump without the miner use 1 kW to heat to room temperature it would need less than 1 kW with the miner to heat to the same room temperature. Plus as you say the COP increases.
So it could be that 5 degC to 22 degC requires 3 kW but the heat pump can do it with 1 kW (COP=3).
The miner use 0.9 kW to heat the the outside air to 11 degC. It would take 2.1 Kw to heat from that to 22 degC. But the heat pump now has a COP of 4 so it can do it with 0.5 kW.
So you lose 0.4 kW but gain bitcoins.
Or you could say that you get 2.25 as many BTC for the same electricity cost.
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Rather than an unrelated graph on Wikipedia, try looking at for example electricityMap:: https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/FR What you'll see there is as you'd expect if you understand how fission power plants work and how economics works for electricity supply. The nuclear plants may not be running at what is notionally 100% nameplate power output but they are not in fact being used as a "buffer option" very much.…
All I see there is consumption %s. I think your thoughts about marginal power usage seem reductive. Of course, immediately your marginal power will be by gas turbine. However if power increases overall, wouldn't sustained power usage force an increase nuclear baseload? The overall GW output of nuclear has varied YoY substantially.
The section you apparently didn't scroll down to, "Origin of electricity in the last 24 hours" shows you exactly what I described.
The chart you've offered is denominated in TWh, thus energy not power, because it is cumulative over an entire year rather than showing marginal power. So you end up concluding that if a nuclear power station is closed for two months for repairs, or a new one is brought online those somehow constitute energy "flexibility".
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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.
I consider personal enrichment as a sort of useful work as it stands to replace my own 'useful work'
Which is so selfish of him. Why should the safety of billions matter over me becoming rich? /s
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Ambient heat is not a "heat taken in", because you don't need to supply it. Usually, heat is taken out from the system and dissipate as ambient heat, so a heat pump can use the same heat again and again, without exhausting of ambient heat.
Of course you need to supply it, you wouldn't use one in Antarctica . (I'm no refrigerant expert, but I assume there's nothing that would work well enough to be worthwhile.) The only reason I can think of for 'or heat taken in' in that definition is exactly to stop people claiming >100% efficiency for heat pumps, which is a corollary for perpetual motion, and equal nonsense. > so a heat pump can use the same heat aga…