[danhak]

A crypto enthusiast friend once made that argument to me and it was so baffling.

By this logic, we should all leave our lights and air conditioners on while we're at work or on vacation because it will increase demand and hasten the transition to renewables.

[nightski]

I'm no crypto enthusiast, but that's not the same argument. You are not moving demand to physical proximity of the renewables in that case, whereas miners claim they can.

[arcticbull]

The correct answer is to connect the energy source to the grid or to do something useful with it at the point of generation. If it's being consumed instead to guess random numbers the economic incentive to do something useful with it is suppressed.

[danhak]

Friend in question was mining bitcoin out of his NYC co-op apartment on a master electricity meter.

[yrral]

Leaving stuff on when you are away is completely different than how bitcoin mining demand response works.

Firstly, at regular electricity prices, bitcoin mining is profitable and it is profitable for the utility to run renewables (which in turn means it is/was profitable to build renewables). When there is substantial demand or low supply, then it is profitable for the utility to pay the bitcoin miners to turn off, because the alternative to import power is more expensive. This in turn makes your electricity cheaper. In addition, the additional steady state demand for power allows for more renewables to be built, which further increases the supply during low supply periods. Your AC does not automatically turn off when this happens.

I am one of those enthusiasts making "strange logic" claims. I've been making this claim well before others but I feel that I keep getting downvoted on them off of people's emotion rather than rational logic.

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources has altered the environmental impact of additional electricity consumption. Where once any increase in consumption was considered harmful due to its reliance on fossil fuels, the rise of renewables introduces scenarios where the marginal environmental cost of electricity can be beneficial if the demand is flexible.

Bitcoin mining has the potential to act as a load balancer for the electricity grid. By increasing its energy consumption during periods when renewable energy production exceeds demand, and reducing consumption during peak demand periods, Bitcoin mining could help stabilize the grid and make renewable energy generation more economically viable.

Bitcoin mining's demand for electricity is unique in that it is primarily cost-driven. Renewable energy generation capacity is particularly volatile. Bitcoin mining power usage can be flexible and responsive to the availability and cost of electricity.

The ability of Bitcoin mining to consume excess renewable energy when it's available (and potentially at low or negative prices) could improve the financial viability of renewable energy projects by increasing the floor price these new projects can sell electricity at. This can encourage the development of additional renewable energy capacity by providing a reliable demand for their output during otherwise unprofitable periods.

Here's some examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25444985

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26094279

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811819

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367174

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30310572

[woodruffw]

To understand why people don't find this compelling (and are sick of hearing it), you probably need to first understand that people consider Bitcoin's profitability a false economy.

In other words: your scenario is identical to GP's except that someone is paying you to run your AC while you aren't at home, rather than just doing it because you can. The logical question is then to ask why they're paying you to run your AC, and that is the uncompelling part: it's not clear that we should be paying people to burn energy to crack hashes.

[jcranmer]

The issue with your argument is there's no real evidence that Bitcoin mining is spurring investment in renewable power plants, and quite a bit of evidence that it is deterring disinvestment in dirty power plants. Furthermore, the links you point to start out by talking about how Bitcoin miners are being paid to not mine.

It's actually rather more like "we'll rapaciously use energy to bring the grid to its utmost limits, but don't worry, if you pay us lots of money [in some cases, more than we get from our regular business!], we'll happily not use quite enough to actually cause it to buckle and fail." Sounds like an extortion racket, doesn't it?

[tsimionescu]

> Where once any increase in consumption was considered harmful due to its reliance on fossil fuels, the rise of renewables introduces scenarios where the marginal environmental cost of electricity can be beneficial if the demand is flexible.

This is a major flawed assumption. Even in a 100% renewable world, every extra watt consumed carries an environmental cost. It is of course less than when burning fossil fuels, but it's still there, and not necessarily even that small.

> The ability of Bitcoin mining to consume excess renewable energy when it's available (and potentially at low or negative prices) could improve the financial viability of renewable energy projects by increasing the floor price these new projects can sell electricity at.

The world has not run out of useful things to do with energy yet, so this is already a bizarre claim. But even ignoring the uselessness of Bitcoin for a moment, this clearly incentivizes the wrong kind of renewable development. If you need to turn your power to Bitcoin to be profitable, that means you can't afford to store this power even as the technology to do that improves. And if you can't store the power, then you can't be part of a fully renewable grid, so you're essentially building the wrong thing and it's better to leave the resources alone to be used in other projects that can actually be self sustaining.

[arp242]

> Bitcoin mining has the potential to act as a load balancer for the electricity grid. By increasing its energy consumption during periods when renewable energy production exceeds demand, and reducing consumption during peak demand periods, Bitcoin mining could help stabilize the grid and make renewable energy generation more economically viable.

Lots of things have the potential for lots of things. But we need to operate on the reality as it exists, and that reality is that Bitcoin uses a phenomenal amount of power, to the point that people are paying Bitcoin miners to not use electricity when the grid is at capacity (as mentioned in the article).

[anigbrowl]

I see your point but disagree with it. It's not load balancing because you're not putting anything back to the grid at times of high demand. Yes, you're incentivizing production of renewable energy (good), but that could be done equally well by investing more in batteries, whether of the chemical or gravitational variety.