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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

#331

Post by tialaramex »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #313
ericd wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cost effective yes, efficient no.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#332

Post by Aachen »

trungdq88 wrote: post #91
mrweasel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently a Facebook datacenter in Denmark is supplying around 10.000 homes with heating. You can argue that Facebook isn't actually doing anything useful, but still, it's better than to waste the generated heat.

Fascinating! Is this true? Do you have a link? Thanks!

I don't doubt it, they'd be silly not to do it: good PR from a waste product? Perhaps you can even charge for it? Amazing deal, especially the former and especially for Facebook. It's also very common; a school I went to was heated by the data center across the road.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#333

Post by seniorsassycat »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #323
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And, as a bonus efficiency feature, most heat pumps are installed with the condenser external to the home! Yes, if you draw an imaginary box around the home and the outdoor/underground condenser, they're exactly 100% efficient, but if you only consider the inside of the home and ignore that the condenser is taking in heat energy from the outside, they're more than 100% efficient.

The power station and natural gas plants are outside my house too, so my restive floor heaters and furnace are >100% efficient.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#334

Post by Aachen »

rblatz wrote: post #291
pstrateman wrote: post #270

This makes sense unless you have the option of natural gas heating, then not so much.

Most electric heaters are heat pumps which are significantly more efficient than heating via resistive or mining. In fact a heat pump's efficiency is about 300%.

Just to be sure, you're not talking of those €20-50 electric heaters right? Because you say "most" and afaik those are pretty much the only ones people have unless they're in some fancy new building or have a fancy AC and paid extra for that option.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#335

Post by Geee »

Spivak wrote: post #261
afarrell wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be underestimating the amount of work required to achieve real consensus among humans.

Look the actual problem as solved by BTC which is digital cash with no protections like chargebacks requires only one single trusted entity (can be more if we want) maintaining a very simple ledger of transactions operating in the open with auditing done by interested parties. This is plenty achievable given that banking, which is far more complicated and messy, works. It doesn't not require a small country's energy…

What happens when banks break the consensus and what is needed to prevent that?

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#336

Post by ramraj07 »

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.

I'm stull struggling to understand this concept can someone explain further

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#337

Post by lalaland1125 »

xenocyon wrote: post #276

1. At an individual/hobbyist level this is a fine thing to do, if one is already a cryptocurrency enthusiast. 2. At a social/planning level it is important to remember that opportunity costs matter, and this should not be recommended as public policy. 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 multi…

An alternative to using heat pumps is to use gas heating. Gas heating lets you achieve >100% "efficiency" relative to electric heating because you don't have to pay the price of converting the gas into electricity.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#338

Post by stopping »

seniorsassycat wrote: post #297
drran wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

This is incorrect. We measure the "efficiency" of a heat pump by the amount of heat moved into a space divided by the work energy provided to the pump (electricity in this case). This is called the "coefficient of performance". Typical heat pumps have a CoP of 3 or more. Meaning, you can spend 100W of electricity to pump 300W of heat into your home. A purely resistive heater only has a CoP of 1.

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#339

Post by ramraj07 »

xenocyon wrote: post #276

1. At an individual/hobbyist level this is a fine thing to do, if one is already a cryptocurrency enthusiast. 2. At a social/planning level it is important to remember that opportunity costs matter, and this should not be recommended as public policy. 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 multi…

Looks like even OP with their fancy own home didn't actually install a heat pump the way which will make it more than 100% efficient, what about the large horde of people who rent and can't do a thing about how their house is heated? It's trivial to find out if your heating system is actually efficient and if it's not why shouldnt you run crypto mining?

Re: I heat my home by mining crypto currencies

#340

Post by _0w8t »

xenocyon wrote: post #276

1. At an individual/hobbyist level this is a fine thing to do, if one is already a cryptocurrency enthusiast. 2. At a social/planning level it is important to remember that opportunity costs matter, and this should not be recommended as public policy. 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 multi…

Consumer-grade heat pumps do not approach the theoretical thermodynamic efficiency limit especially when the outside temperature is significantly below freezing temperature as that complicates design. Plus they do not last forever and it takes a lot of energy to make them. So a hybrid design with an electrical pre-heater for really cold weather can be the least consuming in the total balance of energy. But then one can just as well mine crypto currencies in the preheater just as the article described.
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