I need to get into the business of being paid to not mine crypto. Sounds lucrative, and I have the skillset already.
Here I am, not mining crypto for free, like some sucker!
if you’re good at something, never do it for free
At first glance, this makes zero sense, but once you dig in and read the details, it makes even less sense
I especially like the part where they say encouraging crypto mining will somehow create power grid innovations. What?
Either you innovate or you pay that company $32M every summer forever
I’m pretty sure their goal is the latter based on the other part of the article which says they can act like padding.
Not in Texas, at least. Our government here is in the habit of actively making everything worse, not better.
Trickle down grid, food, climate, whatever just fucking gimmie peasant. /s
That has the same energy as someone claiming they drive better tipsy than sober
pro tip, be born with a parent who runs a large power grid who can buy your debts
Makes sense to me, just sounds like the crypto company is holding the state’s power grid hostage
Who has the keys to free the hostage? ERCOT or the Crypto Mine?
Don’t blame the Crypto Mine for the decisions of the State or ERCOT.
TVA doesn’t give energy credits. They give you a thirty minute notice that your ¢/kwh is about to quadruple.
deleted by creator
Even if all you have is wind and solar, you can still turn it into baseload power by pumping water up behind dams, storing it in battery grids, or turning it into green hydrogen via electrolysis. Hell, you could even use it to heat up salts until they turn into a molten salt, which can be used for about 12 hours, going off of solar towers with molten salt generators…
deleted by creator
Even if that’s their strategy you’re not guaranteed a return when mining. If you or your cluster don’t mine the block all of that energy was absolutely wasted. If we didn’t have a shitty ass isolated grid we could just sell the energy to another part of the country.
You know what they say, whenever the stars are over Texas…
Shut down the big mines
I don’t know about this specific case but it’s a common practice to have big consumers be on specific agreements with national grid so they can be shut off on demand to ensure the grid integrity. The companies are compensated for the inconvenience in exchange for their flexibility. Usually it’s with heavy industries like metal, paper and glass manufacturers.
My knowledge is specific to TVA, but I was privy to such an agreement that a Cryptominer I worked for had.
The Local Utility Provider would bill the company for their usage, but they did not provide the rate. TVA did because of the amount of electricity. This rate is much cheaper than the Utility Provider offers residential customers; economies of scale as well as the inability to store this amount of power meaning it’s “wasted” otherwise. Whenever there is a period of intense usage TVA would provide a 30 minute notice. After the 30 minutes were up the rate provided to us (industry) would more than quadruple, and was actually quite a bit above the residential rate. Residential customers are entirely exempt from this. Your rate, is your rate, is your rate.
The effect of the above meant that it was a mad scramble to shut everything offline whenever we got notice. Otherwise we were losing money. Regular industry trudged along because their bottom line doesn’t care if their power rate quadrupled for 3 hours a dozen days out of the year. It’s not that big a deal.
I definitely got to see the sausage being made, and it’s opened up my mind to some of the ignorance around crypto mining. If anything it drove me further away from being interested in it as anything more than a neat tech demonstration that people figured they could trade.
Yep. Architected a bunch of software to measure baselines, prove or disprove responses to demands within requested periods etc.
You don’t want giant arc furnaces running full tilt in the midst of an energy crunch. It’s enough compensation to cover NOT producing anything that day which the ratepayers pay for but also benefit from.
Everything had to work sub-second round-trip, fun stuff, egomaniacal boss.
Maybe if Texas shutdown those miners, their power grid wouldn’t be so strained all the time.
Maybe if they didn’t have a power grid that was cut off from the rest of the country that wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe their citizens wouldn’t freeze to death when there’s a little snow.
Those damn people, paying for electricity AND using it?!
Edit: Is this take so egregious its not worth even worth discussion? Just downvote and move along? The hive-mind opinions is one thing, but the lack of interest in actually engaging in discussion is really sad. But I guess it’d make sense for them to go hand in hand.
That’s like saying it’s fine for the Kardashians to use as much water as a whole city during a drought, because they pay for it.
Eh, idk. Depends on the cost structure I guess. What if their (collective, with other similar users) excessive use is charged at a rate that makes it easier to fund the public infrastructure that benefits everyone?
At least in San Antonio, the utility charges a higher rate above a certain threshold.
Edit: also, people are calling for a ban of mining. It’s not as if they’re ALWAYS in a state of grid strain.
All you did was make a satirical comment.
People are still mining bitcoin? Lmao
People will always be mining. The cheaper the value, the less miners meaning more coins to sell. It won’t ever fully die.
