Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
1–10 of 188 posts
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#2How much are they paying for power?
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#3Didn't watch the video, but a quick point on how the energy efficiency of this works out:
Electric heaters are 100% efficient at turning electrical energy into heat. All the energy they take in, that's where it goes.
Bitcoin mining (and computers in general) are basically in the same boat. There's some ancillary energy use for blowing air around or shining lights or making sound waves, but for the most part the electricity turns into heat and does some math along the way.
Sounds great! Perfectly efficient! But the important caveat is that heat pumps are (effectively) more than 100% efficient. They can take 100 watt of electricity to transfer 300 watts of heat from outside to inside.
It's not technically a measure of "efficiency", we call this the "coefficient of performance" instead. Or we call it the "seasonal energy efficiency ratio", which is the same thing except multiplied by some constant factor because somebody wanted a scale that went up to higher numbers. Or for heating, the heating season performance factor, which I forget the specifics of, but is geared toward how well it works pumping heat in from outdoors when your heat source (outdoors) is very cold.
In short, it's just as efficient as any other electric heater, but heat pumps are 3-4x better than that.
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#4How much are they paying for power?
In Siberia power is paying for you!
Seriously though in Irkutsk electricity is about 0.017usd per kilowatt/hour
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#5Towards the end of the video, the owner makes a point that this democratic distribution of mining power instead of large miners controlling the network is a good idea. Curious to hear more about this -- does anyone know good writing re: Democratic / distributed benefits of mining?
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#6Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#7There are many other cases of people heating homes with mining rigs, especially in places that has a year-round cold climate. Electricity savings in cooling the rigs as well as heating the home + the profit from mining, makes the whole thing worth it...
... IF you can tolerate the noise that the rigs generate
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#8Didn't watch the video, but a quick point on how the energy efficiency of this works out: Electric heaters are 100% efficient at turning electrical energy into heat. All the energy they take in, that's where it goes. Bitcoin mining (and computers in general) are basically in the same boat. There's some ancillary energy use for blowing air around or shining lights or making sound waves, but for the most part the elect…
> But the important caveat is that heat pumps are (effectively) more than 100% efficient.
Well, yes, but heat pumps can't mine Bitcoin :)
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#9Didn't watch the video, but a quick point on how the energy efficiency of this works out: Electric heaters are 100% efficient at turning electrical energy into heat. All the energy they take in, that's where it goes. Bitcoin mining (and computers in general) are basically in the same boat. There's some ancillary energy use for blowing air around or shining lights or making sound waves, but for the most part the elect…
To be fair a heat pump probably wouldn’t work in Siberia with such low temperatures.
Most heat pumps are no good below 20f.
Re: Bitcoin mining heats homes for free in Siberia [video]
#10As a kid I always tried to convince my mom to let me play computer games to heat our house during winter. She didn't believe me. But it was probably not the efficiency of the heating that stopped her from letting me game all day, though