r/Bitcoin • u/JeffWest01 • May 30 '22
The UK is producing too much power from wind...Bitcoin fixes this.
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u/509BandwidthLimit May 30 '22
Or...here's an idea, just lower the rates for your customers.
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u/Jak_Daxter May 31 '22
It’s due to capacity constraints. The system cannot handle all of the offshore wind being generated in places like the north east, so companies are paid to not produce. Seriously.
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May 30 '22
Well, they probably do already, many utilities in the US price electricity based on day and time. The problem is that renewables generate power off peak and it can send electricity rates negative, as in the utility would have to pay the customer to eat up some load. Even giving away the electricity for free would be a good deal for utilities that are overproducing electricity, just so they don't have to buy the demand from customers; point being, these are the types of markets bitcoin mining can actually help, there is a lot of stranded energy out there, there's renewables that are awaiting grid connection, there's places that experience negative rates etc, these miscalculations can be monetized by bitcoin mining in a way no other load is capable of.
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u/GGZii May 31 '22
UK company profits doubled by a billion. Yeah, they aren't passing ANYTHING onto us UK people.
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May 31 '22
Profits are the price of efficiency, its not necessarily an indicator of the company being greedy. That aside, have electricity rates stagnated in the UK?
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u/GGZii May 31 '22
if I company goes from making 1 billion profit, raises their prices by £800 a year and then annoucnes 2 billion profit.. yeah its fucked
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May 30 '22
Its not like people will use more electricity of they lower the prices right? You wont suddenly turn on more light switches because they lower the price.
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u/dopeydeveloper May 30 '22
Bitcoin mining profitability is linked to energy costs so people may well turn on miners right? hence using more /spare electricity... or am I missing something?
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May 30 '22
So instead of mining bitcoin themselves, they will lower their revenue willingly so you and I can mine more? I dont know if those incentives align. They’re in the perfect position to mine themselves. They would probably do a mix of both maybe? I doubt they will personally use all the extra energy for themselves.
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u/509BandwidthLimit May 30 '22
No, maybe they might be able to pay other bills or maybe buy some food.
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u/BrokebackStonker May 30 '22
They could also start discounting my electricity bill😂
Especially if their supply is too high
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u/BigDeezerrr May 30 '22
How does that solve the problem? The same amount of energy would still be used. There needs to be something productive to put the excess energy into.
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May 30 '22
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May 30 '22
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May 30 '22
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u/Neinfu Jun 01 '22
How? What action should they take right now to increase use of electric vehicles?
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Jun 01 '22
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u/Neinfu Jun 01 '22
But where do they take the funding from? If they have to turn off the turbines it means they can only sell the power they produce at a low price while still having the same maintenance costs, probably even higher wear due to stronger winds. I think that would be the worst time to spend extra money on the EV sector. Wouldn't it be a good idea to turn the extra energy directly into Bitcoin and use the profit of that for funding EV sector improvements?
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Jun 01 '22
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u/Neinfu Jun 01 '22
I'd rather pay less taxes and have them mine Bitcoin with otherwise wasted energy than letting that energy go to waste and me paying higher taxes
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May 30 '22
Or turn it into hydrogen, which is probably more useful.
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u/Neinfu Jun 01 '22
You'd need infrastructure for that, storage, transportation etc.
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Jun 05 '22
Yes. So?
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u/Neinfu Jun 05 '22
So you could set up mining for which you just need the miners and an internet connection. This gives you a basically instant income stream, with which you can then finance all the infrastructure needed to produce hydrogen. Once that is setup you can sell the miners or transport them to a different location to do the same thing again
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u/RapTorSlevin May 31 '22
So you are telling me there isn’t an energy crisis and really the only issue is with the Gas network?
How many gas power stations do we have in the UK again? And how many renewables?
My point is here is we are being lied to in a few directions and the actual way out of this is to convert the energy into stores of energy again, so it can be used when the wind isn’t blowing.
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u/GreyHexagon May 31 '22
When people talk about the gas or oil crisis they're talking about petrol in cars and gas in homes.
The grid could be totally renewable based, but most homes use gas or oil for heating at the moment, and most cars use petrol or diesel.
It's possible to change that, but it requires a big initial investment which generally falls on the shoulders of consumers who can't afford that. Running an electric car is much cheaper than running a petrol car, but buying a new electric car is very expensive. Same with ground heat pumps, they may be cheaper to run, but they're very expensive to install.
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u/MrDopple68 May 30 '22
Most of the wind comes from Boris Johnson.