Its great to see this thread being open again, had some thoughts, which I could not post because of the lock.
Well, what you are saying is not entirely true, even in Europe. Only on thermal and nuclear plants you can produce the exact amount of energy being demanded. And these are not the only types of electricity plants in the world.
You need to produce the exact amount of energy
on the grid, it is achieved with the regulation of the sum of the power plants. Almost every power plant's output can be regulated to a certain degree, the real question is how quickly can you regulate this output.
For example, nuclear power plants with huge steam turbines are actually really slow in this aspect, whereas gas turbines tend to be quicker, with coal-fired steam turbines falling in between them. It is worth noting, that modern power plants with gas turbines are really quick to start, and is pretty easy to regulate the load.
But other power source's output can theoritically be regulated, for example there are bypass tubes in hydro power plants (maybe not all of them), or you can shut down individual wind turbines, etc. as I described earlier. It is not often used though, as the power these plants produce is so cheap.
There are countries in Europe like Switzerland which they pump water from the base of the valley back to the top of the elevation, so they can sell this excess energy at peak hours of consume to another countries.
If energy could be stored, that would not happen. Search about it on google you will find out.
Indeed some are hydro plants are
able to store energy, but not all of them. Not all hydro plant have a reservoir, actually some of the biggest of the world do not have. They are called
Run-of-the-river hydroelectricity .
Yes exactly, you described pumped-storage hydroelectricity, what I referred as "pumped hydro". They really pump water up to a higher elevation, then they let that water flow down through a turbine, which generates electricity. This is a way of storing power, and actually, 96% of the power storage capacity is pumped hydro. Take a look at this wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricityAlso, in this two paragraphs, I felt you had opposing statements about energy storage, which I highlighted.
Even if bitcoin is not be produced from excess energy, it can still be a sponsor of alternative energy sources. As cryptomining is profitable, people could buy solar panels (which can be shut down, but there is no reason to do so, and you cannot store solar energy) and use the excess energy produce to mine.
Well you can't store energy at your home really cost-efficiently, but there are battery storages, for example the Tesla Powerwall, which was designed to store electricity. And is often used with solar panels. And actually, it does not matter where the electricity comes from, you can store it anyways.
I think Antonopoulos sometimes speaks too much, but he is very knowledge about crypto and respected in crypto community. Maybe he made a few mistakes in that video, but he has a point. Just saying bitcoin is just bad for the environment is just false and hypocrisy.
He might be very knowledgeable about crypto, and be respected, but he got some things wrong. I'm sorry if I sounded a bit hostile, but the false ideas he had about how the power grid works was something I needed to correct.
But I dont think he has a right point. He would have a point, if bitcoin mining would play a role in balancing the loads on the power grids - which is a really interesting idea, but nothing that exists.
Basically any power consumer could be considered green using his logic. It is just not correct.
Lets get some things right. Every electricity consumer is polluting the world. Nothing is green about mining Bitcoins. It is not a hypocrisy.
