Genuine question, wouldn’t large mining farms avoid regions where electricity is in high demand, and therefore have higher electricity rates, making it unprofitable for mining? Plus electricity generated is only “wasted” if there’s a surplus and the surplus isn’t used.
Excess Energy is never wasted, that is a myth.
Texas energy rate prices are lower than average, which is why miners are flocking there.
Most Power Grids are interconnected, they have to maintain a % of power to keep their grid stable,
when their usage is lower, they sell the so called excess energy to the other grids.
(Their is No wasted energy.)So their is no massive amount of excess energy in the grid system.
But in regions with low demand for electricity,
don’t the power stations regulate the output themselves, which could lower profit? Wouldn’t industrial POW miners be welcome consumers for those power stations because it makes them generate the output to their capacity? I don’t know why some people believe this is bad. It’s simply commerce.
Actually in the US, power plants and power generators hand over control of their output to Power Grid Operators.
They do this to avoid a monopoly.
https://peguru.com/2018/09/who-controls-the-power-grid-in-usa/https://www.anthropoceneinstitute.com/science/grid/Grid operators constantly monitor and manage the demand, supply, reserve margins, and power mix to ensure that you have immediate access to power in your home or business. What is the reserve margin? It is a specified backup generation capacity that can compensate for potential forecasting errors, unexpected power plant shutdowns or weather events
The grid operator uses a three-phase planning process to ensure that power plants produce the right amount of electricity to meet electric demand at any given time. Electricity supply must balance demand at all times in order to avoid a blackout or other cascading problem. The production of electricity is adjusted in 15 minute intervals to account for demand changes throughout the day. For this reason, there are three main types of power plants: baseload, load-following, and peakers.
Baseload power plants meet the minimal power needed by the grid and are designed to be on most of the time. Their capacity factor, or percent of time operational, is above 80%. They are only shut down or curtailed when performing maintenance or repair. Baseload power is the cheapest type of generation and usually supplied by coal fired and nuclear power plants because they can provide large amounts of power (up to 1.6 GW).
Load-following plants, also known as intermediate load plants, are typically combined-cycled gas fired power plants, which have a high thermal efficiency of up to 58%. They have a gas turbine and a waste heat recovery system to capture the gas turbine’s exhaust to drive a steam turbine that produces additional electricity. Generation from load-following plants can be ramped up and down as needed. Their capacity factor is usually less than 30% of the time. But they are more complex to maintain and more expensive to operate/
The power plant of “last resort” are peaker plants. They are turned on for even shorter periods of time to meet extremely high high demands, for example, when air conditioning is used during hot days. Due to their low capacity factor, which could be as low as a few hours for the entire year, they the most expensive type of generation.
How is power bought and sold in the US?
Electricity is bought and re-sold on the wholesale power market before finally reaching the final consumer. With the exception of Texas, this market is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) due to the interstate nature of the grid.
The wholesale market is open to utility owned suppliers and marketers, non-utility independent power producers (IPPs), and excess generation from traditional vertically-operated utilities. Furthermore, participants in the wholesale market do not necessary have own generation capacity or serve the end-user. Much like other commodity markets, individual traders (power marketers) buy electricity on the market to re-sell it.
Once the electricity is procured from the wholesale market, it is sold to the final consumer through the retail market. In states where full retail competition exists, customers may choose from either their incumbent utility supplier or from an array of new competitive suppliers
How do grid operators work together?
Within the regional wholesale markets, grid operators organize under a regional transmission organization (RTO) or independent system operator (ISO). These entities serve as a third-party independent operator of the transmission system to control, monitor, and coordinate the operations of a grid.
About 60% of the U.S. electric power supply is managed by RTOs. Ten Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) operate bulk electric power systems across much of North America.
These operators ensure that no preference is given in the dispatch of a utility-owned generator over a competitive generator. Grid operators must be certified under the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
Since PoW miners require 24x7 power, they draw down a large % of the Baseload power plants ,
which in turn means more Intermediate Load plants, are running longer,
and that when weather extremes happen, the “last resort” are peaker plants which if unable to meet the increased demand,
that is when the power grid operators start rolling blackouts to avoid the whole grid collapsing and transformers burning out.
Bitcoin Miners draw such large amounts of power in small regions , they totally remove a large % of the energy generated by the Baseload power plants.
If the Number of Bitcoin Mining devices were regulated to limit their number per power grid, then their power drain could be managed better by the power grid operators thus avoiding the rolling blackouts that have to happen to protect the grid.
* Regulating the number of ASICS per grid would have huge impact on Miners Profits as further separates locations increases their costs. Which is one reason Ethereum dev decided to avoid the potential coming government regulations by switching to PoS.*
A lot of people in the bitcoin community want to cry fud and ignore the power drain of PoW,
It is not fud, when the Power Grid operators start rolling blackouts, which has already happen in China and Iran,
which is why they started banning mining.
Power Grid operators only concern is protecting the Power grids, they don't care about bitcoins , altcoins or any of our opinions on algorithms, so the pretense that they are involved in fud is totally baseless, all they care about is a functioning power grid.
It is like this, Bitcoiners don't have to switch to PoS,
but they will have to do something to combat the energy drain they are placing on the power grids,
before the Governments step in and make the decision for them.
Which in China , they decided it was easier to ban bitcoin PoW mining than regulate it.
OK, then in that context, can we agree that Chrismas lights are also a wasteful/useless use of energy that doesn’t benefit society? Where’s the “Ban the Christmas Lights Foundation”, or people calling to ban them because it’s harmful for the environment? We don’t see them anywhere.
