Topic: Power companies should mine bitcoins (Read 3019 times)

Transmission and converting AC to DC and back to AC are completely different things.

Also batteries are wildly expensive.. like stupid stupid expensive.  Storing the power is something only a noob would say.. I am sorry but it is true.

I don't think this is true. Do you have any sources on this? It has been (somewhat) proven above that the electric grid (in the US at least) is very efficient and looses little via leakage getting electricity from electric plants to where it is used

You really can not store AC power in any meaningful way....  and AC to DC,  then back to AC for transmission....  that isn't efficient either.

The power system, likely looses about 25 to 40 percent of the energy from generation to your door in things like line loss, along with losses at transmission.

While I am not saying the OP's idea is good or bad, since power systems are run by governments, and they manage to mess it all up at least 3/4 of the time.....  storing electrical energy isn't as easy as you would think.

Yeah, you are right. There are times when it costs you money to produce electricity and people get money for consuming electricity. At those times you could power up your rig with hardware no matter how old. You could even use old BFL gear or outdated KNC hardware... Man this would mean double the profit for you!

Right. This would also only make the confirmation time unstable as the electric companies would shut off their mining gear in peak demand times which would cause the confirmation time to suddenly increase.

Storing it, hilarious.  That was a good one, storing it, you're cute.

Well, that's what I meant. They know the current draw at peak and non peak times and would either slow their fuel feed or bring generators offline.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a power company storing energy in batteries.

No, that's not even wrong.  But there's very little waste in modern power grids--excess capacity is simply shut down/taken offline, so there's little point in blowing millions of dollars on mining gear which will only mine a fraction of the time (as it becomes obsolete).  Here's a pic:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Electricity_Grid_Schematic_English.svg/694px-Electricity_Grid_Schematic_English.svg.png

I think storing power is quite expensive. I think OP is right. They should definitely think of it.

I wonder if power companies can take the risk & waiting for ROI with crazy difficult right now 

How about hardware mining companies / cloud mining companies mine bitcoin before their product sold to their customer
So, they got profit from their customer & from mining 

I can see this happening even in smaller mining farms. I have a friend that built a cabin on a couple acres of land on a stream in the mountains of NorCal. He loved it but had no electric power because it was too remote. He researched solar and wind power but concluded that they wouldn't work well enough where the cabin was located. He discussed his problem with a friend and they came up with this crazy idea of putting paddle wheels in the stream to turn a generator. The stream gets low at certain times of the year so they dug out and poured a concrete kind of bath tub looking thing in the part of the stream he owns and hung what looks like a can that squirts water out four tubes on to a fan blade. This is hung on steel pipes in the stream with a shaft that connects with pullys to an Onan generator on a concrete pad on the bank. They wired the cabin and it works all year long providing power. The best part is, he didn't even need to install a battery storage system because it's always generating electric. He invited a few of us on a hunting trip (wife code for a weekend long drunken card game) and gave us a tour of how it works. I never realized getting free power was that easy before. He even mounted a satellite dish on a tree for TV and Internet. I asked him if he visits his wife occasionally because if I had his setup I'd probably never go home.

I'm not sure what you mean by "absorb any amount of power supply." Mining is voluntary. PoW proves the energy. It's a matter of physics what you do with the work. You can always turn it back into energy.

The problem with selling energy units is counterparty risk, especially with energy market manipulation. I'm not saying we burn all our produced energy, just the energy that the grid wastes over long distances. Energy is easy to store locally, or at least it should be if we want to get away from burning carbon.

You cannot really store energy, those methods popped up in the renewables sphere mostly, more often only there.

The issue regarding POW mining is that it can absorb any amount of power supply. On the long, we need something else besides that.

would be a good, but certainly energy companies would benefit from it

I'm not saying power plants give away their power. I'm saying it's more efficient for them to mine bitcoins and pass the savings to customers that can store their own peak power needs.

There is no FREE electricity, forget it! Mining Bitcoins isn't cheap at the current difficulty.

Yeah, if the employeers gets free electricity they can use this electricity to mine bitcoin. But not the companies.

A lot of government employees in India get free electricity and other resources.
I am sure a lot of people take advantage of this. Maybe they should use it for mining

Yeah Free elec for home.!! It is awesome but I am not able to use it profitably... I want to start a rig.!! but not much investments..+ no good/cheap internet.!