Potential Killer App: Power storage

[billyjoeallen]

Power companies face a big problem: they generally have the ability to produce power at a more or less constant rate while the demand for that power fluctuates sometimes dramatically. Many schemes to store power have been designed such at giant batteries, artificial lakes with pumps and turbines, massive coils, etc, but non have proven efficient or cost-effective.

A potential solution to this problem could be giant bitcoin mining farms that the power companies only run during off-peak hours. Rather than storing the electricity, the power companies use it to generate bitcoins or other crypto that they can store much more easily. Then they can sell the bitcoins rather than selling the surplus electricity.

The nearly free electricy would put them at a competitive advantage over other miners and the ability to more fully utilize their power generation equipment would put them at a competitive advantage over other power producers.

Thoughts? Comments?

[Harmonica]

kill·er app

noun informal

a feature, function, or application of a new technology or product that is presented as virtually indispensable or much superior to rival products.




No chance of this being the killer app or ever happening.

[billyjoeallen]

kill·er app

noun informal

a feature, function, or application of a new technology or product that is presented as virtually indispensable or much superior to rival products.




No chance of this being the killer app or ever happening.

That means little unless you explain why.

[QuantumCurrency]

This may help on a financial / theoretical level, but does not work for real world load leveling of power. The power company can not sell their mined bitcoin to buy power from bitcoin accepting aliens to supplement their supply during peak times. They have to back that up with real world stored energy or additional capacity. I suppose you're thinking they could use this to help justify increasing capacity, but I don't see that happening in reality. That's a large investment with a payout peroid of decades, paired with for a new concept (bitcoin) that may or may not work, especially in it's current forum. What if SHA256 is broken and there is a switch to SHA512 or other? Current ASIC hardware would no longer function, and if a power company spent billions and expected an ROI over 20+ years, this would be devastating.

I wouldn't trust BTC to remain the same over this time scale.

[zimmah]

It's a nice idea, you should pitch it to the power plants in your neighborhood.

Not sure if it will help bitcoin in any way, but it's still a nice idea.

[thompete]

Power companies face a big problem: they generally have the ability to produce power at a more or less constant rate while the demand for that power fluctuates sometimes dramatically. Many schemes to store power have been designed such at giant batteries, artificial lakes with pumps and turbines, massive coils, etc, but non have proven efficient or cost-effective.

A potential solution to this problem could be giant bitcoin mining farms that the power companies only run during off-peak hours. Rather than storing the electricity, the power companies use it to generate bitcoins or other crypto that they can store much more easily. Then they can sell the bitcoins rather than selling the surplus electricity.

The nearly free electricy would put them at a competitive advantage over other miners and the ability to more fully utilize their power generation equipment would put them at a competitive advantage over other power producers.

Thoughts? Comments?

There is a concept of Smart grids, which companies are adopting, and using that they use power only when required.
And are able to account for flexible demands on power/

[Sitarow]

Power companies face a big problem: they generally have the ability to produce power at a more or less constant rate while the demand for that power fluctuates sometimes dramatically. Many schemes to store power have been designed such at giant batteries, artificial lakes with pumps and turbines, massive coils, etc, but non have proven efficient or cost-effective.

A potential solution to this problem could be giant bitcoin mining farms that the power companies only run during off-peak hours. Rather than storing the electricity, the power companies use it to generate bitcoins or other crypto that they can store much more easily. Then they can sell the bitcoins rather than selling the surplus electricity.

The nearly free electricy would put them at a competitive advantage over other miners and the ability to more fully utilize their power generation equipment would put them at a competitive advantage over other power producers.

Thoughts? Comments?

It is a concept that I have considered as well. What was discovered is that the value after overhead was not there.worth it at the time.

[Mervyn_Pumpkinhead]

Pure PoW mining is idiotic, with it's wasting of resources without improving the network or creating anything constructive. Not to mention the instability it creates in currency value with it's repeating overheating cycle. Contributing more resources to this mess wouldn't be a very good idea.

[Ibian]

Yes! Energy is money! Alpha Centauri was right all along 

[NotLambchop]

Power companies face a big problem: they generally have the ability to produce power at a more or less constant rate while the demand for that power fluctuates sometimes dramatically. Many schemes to store power have been designed such at giant batteries, artificial lakes with pumps and turbines, massive coils, etc, but non have proven efficient or cost-effective.

A potential solution to this problem could be giant bitcoin mining farms that the power companies only run during off-peak hours. Rather than storing the electricity, the power companies use it to generate bitcoins or other crypto that they can store much more easily. Then they can sell the bitcoins rather than selling the surplus electricity.

The nearly free electricy would put them at a competitive advantage over other miners and the ability to more fully utilize their power generation equipment would put them at a competitive advantage over other power producers.

Thoughts? Comments?

>Power companies face a big problem

No, they do not.  A modern power grid has multiple interconnected powers stations absorbing the fluctuating load.  Less efficient generators (coal burners, etc.) are brought online to absorb intermittent spikes in demand.  Shit is planned.  Pricing is also structured to minimize flux (prices higher for periods of peak use).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid#Interconnected_Grid



>A potential solution to this problem could be giant bitcoin mining farms

Giant mining farms standing idle most of the time?

TL;DR:  The wizzkids of today have invented electrical wire, allowing power to be transported from places where it ain't needed to those where it is.  They have also invented alternating current & transformers to make this transport relatively efficient.  There's little "wasted" capacity.  No need to come up with convoluted scheme to justify PoW mining.

[HarmonLi]

I also thought about this. There may be companies, states, or even people who have access to free energy or produce more than they need at the moment. They can't sell that energy at a profit, so why not use it to mine some coins? As soon as the ASICs stop improving that drastically, this could become a thing for long term mining hardware.

[stonerider]

Chinese power companies have been doing this all along.

[NUFCrichard]

As with most things using bitcoin, it is too volatile a market for big companies to get involved in.

[BTCtrader71]

Power companies face a big problem: they generally have the ability to produce power at a more or less constant rate while the demand for that power fluctuates sometimes dramatically. Many schemes to store power have been designed such at giant batteries, artificial lakes with pumps and turbines, massive coils, etc, but non have proven efficient or cost-effective.

A potential solution to this problem could be giant bitcoin mining farms that the power companies only run during off-peak hours. Rather than storing the electricity, the power companies use it to generate bitcoins or other crypto that they can store much more easily. Then they can sell the bitcoins rather than selling the surplus electricity.

The nearly free electricy would put them at a competitive advantage over other miners and the ability to more fully utilize their power generation equipment would put them at a competitive advantage over other power producers.

Thoughts? Comments?

Interesting idea. Make use of transient accessibility to below-average-cost electricity. It would be interesting to see a graph over time of the marginal value of electricity for various power generators (ie what could they get for it at the margin at a given instant in time). I doubt it ever actually drops to zero because of smart grids as mentioned by thompete and NLC, but I also doubt that it stays perfectly constant either.

Some other thoughts:

- Power companies, being public utilities, will need to see bitcoin become more mainstream first.

- The cost of the mining equipment itself would have to be pretty low to justify buying it in the first place if it's just going to sit idle some percentage of the time.

- Could this be harmful to the bitcoin ecosystem by causing fluctations in hashing power? I can see the CNBC and Fox News pundits of 2020 speculating: hot summer => increased power demand for AC => slower network => ECONOMIC DOWNTURN OMG!!

[Bralex]

Would it be great to have something like this? Unfortunately I do not see any real chance of this happening.