SolarBatteryBitcoin • Hacker News Board

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#131

Post by jillesvangurp » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #97

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

> You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. Ideally you need something where the cost of electricity would normally dominate the capital costs of setting up the operation. Otherwise, you're better off running the process all the time, and it's not a useful grid battery. Alternatively, something where you need to overbu…

Water desalination and green hydrogen production using clean energy are already real applications and growing markets. The cost of the water is a function of electricity cost, investment needed to build the plants. So, being able to use cheap clean energy for that would reduce cost and make that more attractive.

With water, you tend to use the cheapest option. If you are in the middle east on the coast, far from rivers or other sources of drinking water, desalinating is pretty much the only option. Which is why that has been common for decades. With green hydrogen, what matters is the cost relative to hydrogen produced from natural gas. Both are dominated by the variable cost of the energy rather than construction cost.

Bitcoin as a green, or rather less hopelessly planet destroying thing, does not make sense because it removes energy that could be used for actually doing something more worthwhile.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#132

Post by Blumfid » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

silveraxe93 wrote: post #76

Blumfid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That money should be used to invest in real energy storage and not burning it through asics and useless calculations.

Is that your money? The whole point of money is that who owns it decides where it should be used.

Yes let's ignore that I'm living on the same planet as you do and it doesn't affect myself and my family.

Right?

And no we don't live in a society where this doesn't matter. You are not allowed to do with your money whatever you want.

Buying a hitman: illegal in most of the world.

And you do understand that it is hypocritical to create a ton of co2 and making farming in other countries really hard and complaining later about immigrants. Just putting it in perspective

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#133

Post by shlant » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

yifanl wrote: post #116

shlant wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do realize that, because the total number of bitcoins is limited, it will get harder and harder to get bitcoins? while I don't really agree with the bitcoin maxi mindset of the comment you are replying to, do you know that you can buy as little as 1 satoshi? (0.00000001 BTC). Yes, eventually all BTC will be mined (in about 2140) but considering 1 sat is currently worth 0.0006 USD, there is still quite a bit of…

The price (and therefore value?) of satoshis rise/fall at the exact same rate as a price of a bitcoin, so I don't see how this invalidates their argument.

if you can acquire 0.0006USD worth of bitcoin then the price of bitcoin alone is not a limiting factor. Maybe if OP is talking about hundreds of years in the future and BTC is worth $1 Million+?

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#134

Post by thinkmassive » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

barathr wrote: post #7

I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-pric…

There are some situations where mining Bitcoin is a very good application of energy that will otherwise be wasted. Here are two that come to mind:

1. Flared gas from oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of extracting oil from the Earth. In the past this was vented straight to the atmosphere, which is a huge waste of energy and causes horrible air pollution. Capturing this gas isn’t useful for many applications because it happens in remote areas, but if there’s a network connection it can be harnessed for mining Bitcoin.

2. Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now.

Neither of these is specific to Bitcoin, because the general concept is running a computer at full load for an extended duration. Bitcoin mining just happens to be the most logical (and profitable) application of that concept at present.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#135

Post by bottled_poe » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 1:48 PM UTC

mekster wrote: post #123

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

Denying is easy but what other fair "waste" do you propose to keep a trustless decentralized system running? Waste is how it's fair and how it negates cheating by letting people stick to its investments.

Some might argue that it’s not worth the cost.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#136

Post by bottled_poe » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

thinkmassive wrote: post #134

barathr wrote: post #7

I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-pric…

There are some situations where mining Bitcoin is a very good application of energy that will otherwise be wasted. Here are two that come to mind: 1. Flared gas from oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of extracting oil from the Earth. In the past this was vented straight to the atmosphere, which is a huge waste of energy and causes horrible air pollution. Capturing this gas isn’t useful for many applications becau…

I don’t mean to direct this at you individually (the sentiment is throughout these threads) - I can’t help but despair when a community of engineers lack the ability to come up with creative solutions for using surplus energy. There is always a better use of those energy sources than Bitcoin mining. Some ideas: Extracting co2 from air, electrolysis, desalination, etc.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#137

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

MrMan wrote: post #120

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

I agree we already have a system of money and trust. Bitcoin energy demands will scale much more than any other uses of the energy grid going forward, so our entire economy becomes slaved to preserving bitcoin. A dystopia

We do NOT have money and trust today. Every single government ever has debased their currency. Central banks cannot be trusted not to destroy your hard earned savings. A dystopia is being enslaved to the existing economic debt machine, rather than being free to trade the hardest money ever invented by humans. When folks understand this, they run to the fiat exits.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#138

Post by Hermio » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:01 PM UTC

randomhodler84 wrote: post #130

Hermio wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is our problem? The problem is creating/producing co2 is a problem for our planet. Can we agree on this? If we agree on the co2 production problem, lets take a look at what bitcoin is doing: It converts a lot of energy/resources of our planet into co2. It does that by the asic's someone has to create, and by far the direct energy consumption. What does bitcoin produce? It produces transaction security right? 1.…

I know you don’t believe it has any value; my belief is it is the most valuable thing on earth, more valuable than gold, platinum and love. I believe this as passionately as you are choosing to ignore it. Your wall of text has many misconceptions and misunderstandings about how things actually work. I implore you to let your partially formed ideas go and read some more about what is really going on here. Why do you t…

I think its currently popular because its new and highly volatile and unregulated.

Our society is quite busy with corona and while bitcoin uses a lot of energy already, the market size is still very small. Core reasons why i think we don't hear more about regulating bitcoins.

Popularity doesn't correlate to real value.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#139

Post by Hermio » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #137

MrMan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree we already have a system of money and trust. Bitcoin energy demands will scale much more than any other uses of the energy grid going forward, so our entire economy becomes slaved to preserving bitcoin. A dystopia

We do NOT have money and trust today. Every single government ever has debased their currency. Central banks cannot be trusted not to destroy your hard earned savings. A dystopia is being enslaved to the existing economic debt machine, rather than being free to trade the hardest money ever invented by humans. When folks understand this, they run to the fiat exits.

To trust whom instead?

How would a world, realisticly speaking, look like if we ever reach a dystopian level where we all stop using the currencies of our own countries?

Srsly, if i stop trusting in the Euro, i can't imagine how our whole economy has to look like. I think we might have a lot of bigger issues at this point in time as bitcoin and probably not enough resources anymore to run bitcoin.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#140

Post by merpnderp » Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

But these same arguments could be used against gold. And yet gold serves a valuable purpose in the economy as it allows people to take more investment risks.