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Comment by Aterio | Hacker News Reader

Always a good idea to build and consume renewable energy and then making heat out of it.

Texas power grid sounds very good: cheap and reliable.

Ah wait wait we talk about searching for arbitrary hashes which can't be recycled or actually used in a state which probably needs AC in summer and an independent unstable power grid in a time were every additional CO2 generated creates even more pressure for our society.

Perhaps not such a good idea?

Perhaps we should not let BTC consume solar panels and renewable energy and use it for things we actually need?

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Texas power grid sounds very good: cheap and reliable.

Not cheap. The people I know in Texas tell me that their electric bills have doubled or tripled since deregulation.

Not reliable. The biggest issue in the current Texas gubernatorial election isn't the economy or immigration or the environment. It's the failure of the power grid last year that led to the deaths of hundreds of people, and how the state has allowed the companies responsible for the failure do little or nothing to fix their problems.

It's always a good idea to find a way for people to profit from extending renewable capacity beyond what's profitable from established users.

If you can't make goverment pay for energy produced by excess wind and solar thrn greedy bitcoin "investors" are next best source of cash.

Yes and we need to stop this shit through laws

BTC providing demand for renewables stimulates the development of renewables. Any massive investment like in renewables carries a risk, and the higher the demand the lesser the risk for the investment on the supply side.

Using organs as dog food also stimulates the organ donation market. Still, maybe it's best to use our current stock wisely.

You've probably missed how a foundational technology for growing organs in the future is currently used to grow mice cells in-vitro as an ethical component of cat food.

No it doesn't.

It's just a lie.

BTC provides demand for cheap energy not for renewable.

And it consumes the demand. It doesn't create this demand for others.

Cheapest energy is when renewables production peaks. Then it can be worth less than zero.

Part of renewable is short term storage.

You use that peak energy to create heat, charge a battery or do similar things.

You can easily create hydrogen.

But using it for searching for a hash is the worst idea.

If you would be able to use the heat output sure that could work but let's someone do that first

Until then doing anything else with this energy is critit!

Battery is expensive and doesn't hold much. Nobody buys your hydrogen or heat an it needs to be made, stored and transported with losses that make this endeavor uneconomical (that's why nobody is doing it).

So you have two options really. Either partially sponsor your windturbin with bitcoins you'll mine with it or not build the turbin at all.

The current problem is not how to utilize every bit of excess energy. The current problem is where to get the money from to build capacity that will at time generate excess that is hard to transport away from the power station.

That's just not true.

We already have plenty of renewable energy which is cost effective.

We don't need Bitcoin to balance this out.

And Bitcoin doesn't just consume the excessive energy, it consumes all of it as long as it is cost effective to consume it.

Not running your Bitcoin farm 24/7 is not effective.

Bitcoin is not supporting energy production.

BTC + a very high carbon tax might actually be an interesting way to incentivize the desired overbuilding on renewables. But Texas is probably going to skip the second part.

Another interesting idea would be for the government to constantly buy any amount of energy produced by renewables at guaranteed price using tax money, and "distribute" it evenly to all enrgy users. This way people using least energy wouldn't pay for electricity at all and people building wind farms would have real good incentive to build more.

That is an interesting idea, I wonder how it would work out. Added benefit of just eating up any demand for energy, I guess crowding out any non-renewables. I bet administratively it would be easier than my idea -- people could proactively show they are selling renewables.

"Good idea to build and consume renewable energy"

A deeper dive: they aren't renewable, they're at best rebuildable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeZwUVx5MY&t=2682s - (Dr. Nate Hagens - Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality - Myth #21: Renewables Can Power THIS Civilization)

I assume we will continue to use renewable energy and mean what you describe.

Interesting to hear rebuild able haven't heard that before.

> A deeper dive: they aren't renewable, they're at best rebuildable

I find your YouTube video neither insightful nor informative. It reads as a string of desperate attempts at gotchas, only possible by repeatedly moving goalposts and misrepresenting positions, which are at best immaterial to the discussion.

I mean, the main point the YouTuber made against renewables is that different energy generation and distribution methods have different properties. Who exactly is expected to take seriously this blend of simplistic fatecious line of reasoning?

I recommend watching the full video. I don't think he's against renewables but trying to frame what they really are in a more realistic manner.

> (...) I don't think he's against renewables but (...)

It really makes no difference what's the youtuber's opinion on renewables. The point is that the arguments made by the YouTuber are completely pointless and meaningless, and completely miss the whole point -- and radical improvements -- made over the total dependency on fossil fuels in general and oil in particular.

This video is a classical case of something that's "not even wrong".

If anyone has any interest in the subject, they'd be better served by reading/watching anything else.

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