Future mining powered by Tesla?

[sidehack]

Cool, so then the people that don't have 'em can help you pay for yours.

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[johnyj]

Difficulty will rise to compensate for the drop in electricity price

[Bicknellski]

Cool, so then the people that don't have 'em can help you pay for yours.

Who is paying for electricity powered by Coal/Nuclear? You are US taxpayers. Dollar for Dollar getting people use solar is best bang for the buck and will eventually reduce the dependency on Coal and Nuclear etc. likely leading to your taxes going to something like roads or education as opposed to cleaning up coal pollution or nuclear decommissioning. Think outside the 'faux' libertarian corporate designed and built box.

Lung disease?
Cancer?
Subsidies for non-renewables?
Devastation to ecosystems?

All of the above and more.

[brontosaurus]

This whole 'concept' is a sideshow. Unless you live in the tropics, solar is not viable unless it's heavily subsidised. To buy a 4kW panel at trade prices is still nearly 1,700 dollars, that does'nt include the inverter and other electronics and that price won't  fall much in the near future. Read this article:

www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why-teslas-powerwall-is-just-another-toy-for-rich-green-people/

Storing energy in a battery isn't energy efficient, end to end you will be lucky to get 70%.

What would be much more efficient, if a little tricky, would be driving an asic at 0.6V directly from a solar cell. It's a diode, remember? ...... No power supplies, no DC - DC, no power factor. Trouble is, no sunshine at night, and lots of supercapacitors needed for low voltage storage.

[Bicknellski]

Viable in Saskatchewan. Plenty of sun and wind to make a DIY system off grid. It has been done for home power.

http://electrodacus.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/electrodacus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxZF8J7wrww

http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/3-2V-50Ah-LiFePO4-battery-GBS_60022436969.html

Guys doing it right now and not in the tropics as Saskatchewan has a lot of sun cloud free days.

For mining though? Now doubtful I would agree.

Solar mining doesn't make sense unless you have access to millions of dollars and do a grid tied system and get the system so cheap that the economy of scale would give you less cost per kilowatt hour even with the battery system very doubtful.

This whole 'concept' is a sideshow. Unless you live in the tropics, solar is not viable unless it's heavily subsidised. To buy a 4kW panel at trade prices is still nearly 1,700 dollars, that does'nt include the inverter and other electronics and that price won't  fall much in the near future. Read this article:

www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/05/01/why-teslas-powerwall-is-just-another-toy-for-rich-green-people/

Storing energy in a battery isn't energy efficient, end to end you will be lucky to get 70%.

What would be much more efficient, if a little tricky, would be driving an asic at 0.6V directly from a solar cell. It's a diode, remember? ...... No power supplies, no DC - DC, no power factor. Trouble is, no sunshine at night, and lots of supercapacitors needed for low voltage storage.

[rammy2k2]

I'm not sure I'm understanding what everyone's raving about.

Is this anything more than an expensive battery in a nice case?

It's TESLA, its solar powered, miners can start dreaming for free electricity ^^

[jdebunt]

Interesting idea, although it'll probably take years until consumers can enjoy the benefits.

[valkir]

Interesting idea, although it'll probably take years until consumers can enjoy the benefits.

Maybe but someone need to do the first step! 

[sidehack]

Cool, so then the people that don't have 'em can help you pay for yours.

Who is paying for electricity powered by Coal/Nuclear? You are US taxpayers. Dollar for Dollar getting people use solar is best bang for the buck and will eventually reduce the dependency on Coal and Nuclear etc. likely leading to your taxes going to something like roads or education as opposed to cleaning up coal pollution or nuclear decommissioning. Think outside the 'faux' libertarian corporate designed and built box.

Lung disease?
Cancer?
Subsidies for non-renewables?
Devastation to ecosystems?

All of the above and more.

I just don't like tax subsidies for pretty much anything. I know the government likes to step in on things it deems necessary but not economically viable (research grants and whatnot), but too much economic meddling in individual lives ends up screwing everyone in some way - either by overtaxing or overdependence. I have no problems at all with the idea of renewable energy sources. That said, I also have no problems with nuclear power. Well, that's not true - I have a problem with the US political grumblings keeping us running on 40-year-old reactor technology when every other country has developed cleaner, safer and more continuously operable reactors. I wouldn't mind seeing actual good and currently available nuclear as a holdover between relatively immediate decomissioning of coal plants and the development of not just a better renewables infrastructure but a better grid infrastructure as a whole. There's a lot of good options and it sucks that the primary ones available to most US residents are the worst and the almost-worst.

[Meech]

Solar is so last year.... Dilithium is the future.  This way we will "live long and prosper".

[Bicknellski]

I just don't like tax subsidies for pretty much anything. I know the government likes to step in on things it deems necessary but not economically viable (research grants and whatnot), but too much economic meddling in individual lives ends up screwing everyone in some way - either by overtaxing or overdependence. I have no problems at all with the idea of renewable energy sources. That said, I also have no problems with nuclear power. Well, that's not true - I have a problem with the US political grumblings keeping us running on 40-year-old reactor technology when every other country has developed cleaner, safer and more continuously operable reactors. I wouldn't mind seeing actual good and currently available nuclear as a holdover between relatively immediate decomissioning of coal plants and the development of not just a better renewables infrastructure but a better grid infrastructure as a whole. There's a lot of good options and it sucks that the primary ones available to most US residents are the worst and the almost-worst.

I agree to some of that.

Personally the future is not nuclear or coal obviously given the problems with both is waste.

Solar if it were given the same subsidies or oil, coal and nuclear had their subsidies removed would mean a huge shift to Solar / Wind / CO2 capture.

It can either be government subsidies or through government closing the loopholes. Either way things won't change appreciably because of the feed trough is set up for coal, oil and nuclear companies not for solar or wind etc.

Tesla got huge tax breaks to break ground on its battery plant. The right move? Keeps jobs in US and cutting edge jobs certainly. There is a lot of fat and waste in the US budget particularly for military spending far in excess of any solar rebates which are minimal. Minimal compare to coal, oil and nuclear subsidization that is now entrenched in US Budgets.

http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/

[brontosaurus]

The future is pretty much coal or natural gas until most of you get to pension age.

Read this if you can get access to a copy: "The Carbon Crunch: How we're getting Climate Change Wrong - and how to fix it" by Dieter Helm.

A lot of it will make your blood boil (especially about renewables and the subsidies they get), but if you're interested in the future of energy generation it gives very good insights.

Bit off topic here, sorry.

[CanaryInTheMine]

Solar makes all the sense, it's simply there, everyday for the taking. What we are missing still is high conversion efficiency panels.  I do believe this will be solved in the near future and energy production will be decentralized at that point.

[Bicknellski]

The Sustainocene: era of personalized energy: Daniel Nocera at TEDxCaFoscariU

Decentralized is the key. If you can power your car and home all OFF GRID, which you can do now almost at par with Grid costs over the lifespan of the solar installation, then the debate over the need for coal or nuclear ends and the water issue would 'evaporate' as well especially with regards to fossil fuel exploration and production.

Imagine solar that produces hydrogen directly and you have cracked part of the dependencies on heavy and costly batteries. Where this will happen is in the 'developing' world not in the US at first.

This would be ideal for mining as well in small decentralized ways then you can make cheaper abundant miners that in totality out mine all the megafarms. Just need to make small cheap miners available to millions. The only people that are working on that challenge right now are Gekkoscience... support that project. There is a potential for a complete reversal of the centralization of mining if you have cheap personalized energy and cheap personalized miners that are in the hands of everyone.

[Bicknellski]

Efficiencies for Solar will improve given newer materials and these could implemented rather quickly into solar cell production. The future for solar is now not later.

Nature Photonics 8, 506–514 (2014) doi:10.1038/nphoton.2014.134
Received 10 February 2014
Accepted 12 May 2014
Published online 27 June 2014

Code:

Abstract:

The past two years have seen the unprecedentedly rapid 
emergence of a new class of solar cell based on mixed 
organic–inorganic halide perovskites. Although the first 
efficient solid-state perovskite cells were reported only in 
mid-2012, extremely rapid progress was made during 2013 
with energy conversion efficiencies reaching a confirmed 
16.2% at the end of the year. This increased to a confirmed 
efficiency of 17.9% in early 2014, with unconfirmed values 
as high as 19.3% claimed. Moreover, a broad range of 
different fabrication approaches and device concepts is 
represented among the highest performing devices — 
this diversity suggests that performance is still far from 
fully optimized. This Review briefly outlines notable 
achievements to date, describes the unique attributes 
of these perovskites leading to their rapid emergence and 
discusses challenges facing the successful development 
and commercialization of perovskite solar cells.

But if you still don't like Tesla's Power Wall for all your power needs... why not throw in some Hydrogen.

Cheap hydrogen fuel from the sun – without rare metals