111–120 of 158 posts
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Where do you live with power costs that high? My power is about 11c/kWh (Chicago).
Chicago has some of the cheapest electricity in the world. Thanks comed for building all the nukes.
https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
And none of them are anywhere near 40-80c, so maybe that commenter is in another country.
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I know the topic is anathema on HN, but a personal friend of mine was working with people in New Hampshire to help make the nuclear power plant a better solution for the regional power needs by equipping it with bitcoin miners that can be turned on and off algorithmically to deal with the fluctuations in demand. I know next to nothing about nuclear energy (or most other kinds of energy), but what I understand from wh…
Surely there are more useful avenues for harnessing excess energy than mining Bitcoins?
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Right, seems kind of silly to me as a utility guy. We have this nuclear plant that we don't want to use as baseload for some reason even though operating it is way cheaper than every other plant we have. Rather dump the electricity into mining bitcoin and expose the utility to those financial risks.
> even though operating it is way cheaper than every other plant we have No. It is not. More expensive than anything else we can imagine
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I know the topic is anathema on HN, but a personal friend of mine was working with people in New Hampshire to help make the nuclear power plant a better solution for the regional power needs by equipping it with bitcoin miners that can be turned on and off algorithmically to deal with the fluctuations in demand. I know next to nothing about nuclear energy (or most other kinds of energy), but what I understand from wh…
> equipping it with bitcoin miners that can be turned on and off algorithmically to deal with the fluctuations in demand. Turning excess energy straight into heat is NOT doing something useful. Install a boatload more storage. Set up desalinization plants. Get manufacturing to move to 3rd shift. Anything other than Shitcoin.
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California has lots of problems, but availability of money is not one of them. I have no worries whatsoever about our ability to properly handle changes in demand going forward. Will a bunch of money get wasted and mis-managed? Of course. It wouldn't be CA if we didn't do that! But we'll still grow just fine.
How dare you use the word "we" to lump us in with our corrupt policymakers. Just because we're exploited and victimized by a parasite, doesn't make us one.
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> even though operating it is way cheaper than every other plant we have No. It is not. More expensive than anything else we can imagine
Marginal versus average cost. Extremely low marginal cost (cost of the next unit to produce) but extraordinarily high average cost (includes capex). You typically make decisions for profit maximization on marginal cost.
It looks like during last year's heat wave, California FINALLY broke its previous all-time peak load of 50,270mW in 24 July 2006, with a whopping 52,061mW on 6 September 2023. Still, peak usage year over year looks flat to my eyes. I'm sure we can't keep time-shifting and efficiency engineering ourselves out of a fundamental need for more total energy for a huge % of EVs and the push to phase out natural gas, but it…
I only plug my car in - and with slow charging - when it is sunny such that my EV’s load basically never hits the grid.
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Surely there are more useful avenues for harnessing excess energy than mining Bitcoins?
I mean this is where pumped hydro would be pretty handy actually. Pumped hydro can't charge as fast as batteries, but can have enormous energy capacity. You could almost certainly tune a pumped hydro installation to absorb the ramp of a reactor cycling up and down, but you'd lose the risk of running dry due to renewable unpredictability.
Hydrogen is a more interesting option. Not necessarily for energy storage, but as a fuel for use cases where electricity can't be used (like fertilizer or methanol rather than cars or heating).
It looks like during last year's heat wave, California FINALLY broke its previous all-time peak load of 50,270mW in 24 July 2006, with a whopping 52,061mW on 6 September 2023. Still, peak usage year over year looks flat to my eyes. I'm sure we can't keep time-shifting and efficiency engineering ourselves out of a fundamental need for more total energy for a huge % of EVs and the push to phase out natural gas, but it…
These days with even off-peak being 40-80c / kWh the best way to charge EVs (which are mostly owned by homeowners) seems to be to bypass the grid and charge using rooftop solar during the middle of the day (or time shifted using battery storage). Obv. not possible for renters or condo owners or for people who can install solar.
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> equipping it with bitcoin miners that can be turned on and off algorithmically to deal with the fluctuations in demand. Turning excess energy straight into heat is NOT doing something useful. Install a boatload more storage. Set up desalinization plants. Get manufacturing to move to 3rd shift. Anything other than Shitcoin.
If you had enough storage you could just build more renewables and produce the power at lower cost.
Renewables can't do base load. Renewables can't do base load. Renewables can't do base load.
If you have enough storage, you don't have to adapt your reactor second by second. You let the storage buffer out the peaks and valleys and you use the reactor to backfill the storage over the course of hours and days.