Quote from: d5000 on March 02, 2018, 03:12:42 AM

Quote from: stompix on March 01, 2018, 09:49:37 PM

But leaving the power grid aside, do you know what the production of all the solar panels was during this week?
A peak of 14MW, out of an installed capacity of 1790MW in the whole country.
Eolian energy was also down because ironically enough the wind speed was too high ...
Guess what rescued the situation?
Good old coal, producing almost 40%.

I understand you want to put those panels only where snow storms don't happen but what country will do this?
Depending entirely on imports? No, it will never happen.
And if it does, it's going to be ugly when there will be an emergency.

My hopes for solar/wind energy are based on the "utopia" that most miners could produce their own energy for their farm in a few years. In many countries, using solar energy for own consumption is already cheaper than using grid electricity - but yes, the "cheapest grid electricity" is still cheaper, so that change won't take place tomorrow.

These miners could install their farms in countries/regions with high solar/wind energy potential, like North Africa, South-Western U.S., the Central Andes or Patagonia. As they would live off the grid their operation wouldn't influence local grid stability. Hardware costs could be higher for these farms, as they wouldn't run 24/7 (if they don't buy electricity storage capacity) and so the hardware would not use their full potential all the day, but eventually they would produce a better ROI than conventional farms connected to a local electricity grid because the "cost per hash" would be lower.

There are a lot of problems with solar, and this is why I refuse to think of it as a solution.
Population growth means more square feet for each new inhabitant, for housing, for food for everything.
And more energy, and more space needed for solar panels.

Each household in the UK consumes 4500kwh, in China only 1300kwh.
When they will finally afford all the things an European has, imagine this x3.
And we're also adding electric cars to this whole mess, 1kwh for each 5km.
And on top of this ...let's add a few TW for mining:P No, it won't work.

Speaking strictly of miners, do you think in the next decade countries and governments will just let miners spread solar panels all over the place, and not intervene?
They will either tax it or simply ban private solar fields from certain regions as they will need this energy fro themselves.

If BTC will stay around this price for a little while, (as in 3 years till the next halving) we will probably avoid one hell of a mess. If the price will jump to 100k we are going to se a another gold rush of epic proportions.