Quote from: Welsh on Today at 01:41:11 PM

Quote from: n0nce on May 05, 2022, 01:08:13 AM

I wouldn't be very surprised if we see completely integrated 'green' mining solutions for homeowners in the near future (hobbyists are already working on them as we speak), consisting of solar panels on the roof, using the miner's heat output to heat water for the house (needed winter & summer) and a way to put it outside or submerged to make it silent. The miner(s) could even help repay the solar installation faster, as you don't usually pull the whole power that it can theoretically provide, so part of the generated energy is lost if you're not mining. With a good OS, the power draw can be dynamically adjusted depending on the output of the solar array.

By that, do you think it'll ever be a possibility that energy solutions might be sold or supplied with the purchase of mining equipment, or is that a little bit too expensive, and bulky to justify?

I can definitely imagine this happening, yes. Especially since it's not very easy to set up without a lot of knowledge not only about Bitcoin mining, but also about fields like solar energy and house installations. What we have today are specialist in specific areas, but an integrated solution doesn't exist yet. I've seen a bunch of DIY projects that use excess solar energy to run miners and the heat of the miners to heat their home, as well as people doing just one of the two.

Here's one I could quickly find again, who 'reduced natural gas use by 64% in March and reduced his effective electrical residential rate to $0.073/kWh': https://twitter.com/DaddyBTC_pleb/status/1516118484375293957

The creativity of some people is commendable!
This guy runs the hot air from the miner into his drier to run it without gas: https://twitter.com/missaghi/status/1515371115664846848

And this one here heats his whole house with seven S19's (not cheap, I agree, but if you can afford it; and they will one day pay back): https://twitter.com/ResetEconomic/status/1506428719778435073

Quote from: Welsh on Today at 01:41:11 PM

I do agree, that a lot of miners will be looking to repurpose that lost energy, and heating water might the method of choice. Although, I haven't looked at the practicalities of that or how much water you'd be able to actually heat up. Since, most water is heated up on demand, i.e if you want a bath, that's when your boiler kicks in, and heats up the water. I'm not sure if a miner will have enough to be able to do that on demand? The energy could be banked potentially, and then used?

I'm not 100% familiar with the control circuitry of a modern boiler, since what I have is very old and I think keeps the water relatively warm at all times, since it would need a lot of time to heat up the whole volume if it only kicked in the moment I open the hot water tap. I mean, worst-case, you're heating the water 'more than needed'; so the boiler may be hot the whole day, while you don't need hot water around the clock, but if the alternative is dumping the heat outside the window, that's still better, right?
But sure, you can add in a battery; the whole system just gets more and more complex.
One option I can envision, with modern solar installations often including a battery anyway, is that the miner starts up once the battery is full and you still have excess power.
It would be financially infeasible to go this route with an S19 or so that is very expensive (+10 grand) to buy and already takes ~2 years to ROI when running all the time, but since this is excess power, you can use an old S9 that just costs $500 used.

Quote from: Welsh on Today at 01:41:11 PM

I'm not a miner, I'm just interested in combatting this movement of Bitcoin vs Energy. While, I do think it's blown out of portion from what I can gather, its still an issue that ideally we need to overcome. Public perception means everything when it comes to adoption.

Honestly, I believe the public perception could shift if people understand two things:
(1) the current monetary system they know and (maybe) love consumes not only much more energy, but also emits more carbon dioxide and costs human lives
(2) Bitcoin mining creates an incentive to build new solar installations which will long-term kill coal and gas power, which they must surely be big proponents of if they're really environmentalists.