Quote from: eternalgloom on August 30, 2018, 10:11:27 AM

Quote from: franky1 on August 29, 2018, 09:10:24 PM

this has been talked about soo much. many topics

summary:
these bitcoin miners have special contracts with energy companies for the energy companies to produce X amount of electric day or night.
this is good. because these power stations have a guaranteed stream of income and also a measurable utility it can prdict.

if power stations could produce sat 30mwat. but residentially it only produces 25mwat between 4pm and 9pm and drops to 15mwat ovrnigh-morning. the power station would not just stay at 25mwat all day and night. they would keep switching on and off as demand drops and rises.

sometimes because it takes 30 minutes+ to warm up the generators they end up having to grab(import) excess electric from neighbouring power stations to cover any random spikes of utility.

there have been times whre brown outs have occured when suddenly many people used electric but the power stations could not predict it. the UK had statistics that there are sudden spikes that happen during commercials of tv shows. because people suddenly go to their kitchen turn on the kitchen light. turn on their kettle to make a cup of coffee.

imagine 1million people suddenly flipping the switch of a kettle of 1800wat for jsut 5 minutes...

so power companies LOVE guaranteed income and measurable utility it can predict..

also
power companies over the last decade have switched and grown their renewable electricity sources. this is why amrican power stations have suddenly started being bitcoin mining farm happy. they have seen the benefit to iceland and the benefit to china

dont believe the FUD of "governments hate bitcoin" when you separate "government" and utility companies to see that utility companies love it as they can more happily keep a few extra generators running without having to warm up/warm down generators at certain times of day. they can also use the income from the mining farms to expand. or atleast not need to import electric during times of spikes. which saves them money

last point
compared to 2012, the GPU mining days. bitcoin mining is very much energy efficient. and becoming more energy efficient
take this year new 7nm ASICS vs 14nm ASICS can do:
14nm can do ~14terrahash for 1.3kw
7nm can do ~28terrahash for under 1kw

so although the hashrate may double the electric needed for a doubled hashrate goes DOWN
now think about how many GPU's would be needed to do 14 terrahashes of mining. if ASICS never became a thing

You're completely right, I've read an article which stated that Russia was looking into selling their excess power to Bitcoin miners.

https://bitcoinist.com/russia-power-sell-energy-bitcoin-miners/

They're even willing to offer them cheaper prices for that power, 2 rubles instead of their normal rate of 4.5 rubles.
Now this article doesn't mention it, but they're doing this because otherwise they would be overloading their grid.

I think that everyone here has a bias in favor of Bitcoin which makes them blind towards reality. Guys, all top scientists are talking about how we should reduce carbon footprint since we are facing a catastrophic global warming process. Bitcoin's network is already adding 1% of total electricity consumption to the echosystem so that we can gamble it on exchanges. I point to everyone's attention that even though Bitcoin swallows 1% of the world's energy it still cannot be used to pay for 99.999+% of the world's products.