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Comment by shermanyo | Hacker News Reader

Why not offer an agreement for off-peak use, and put profits into expanding capacity? This always seemed like a great use case for bootstrapping new power generation projects. It provides an immediate customer for excess base power generation that can be scaled back / migrated once demand picks up.

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Bitcoin miners want to run as often as possible.in Texas they got paid when they don't run.

And this takes away any motivation to solve problems and invest in storage etc.

It would make more sense for the energy company itself to do this but never with some other company.

Nonetheless it's a myth that we constantly have so much unplanned overproduction.

Don't forget: Bitcoin market is disconnected with the energy market.

I think its a valid point that this approach would be more useful when run by the energy provider themselves, and would make it much easier to justify turning the miners off / migrating them to newer projects as a way to manage demand. I think this capability would allow them to plan for a higher level of overproduction in the early stages, or scaling up ahead of the rise in demand.

> Why not offer an agreement for off-peak use, and put profits into expanding capacity?

I think there is no such thing as off-peak in hydro power. It's a big water reservoir that you can open and close the tap at will.

I was referring to peak vs off-peak demand, rather than generation.

> provides an immediate customer for excess base power

It’s a reservoir. It doesn’t need anchor customers. To say nothing about the costs of being crypto affiliated to the company and region.

Many, many hydro plants operate run-of-the-river and have no significant resivour. These plants simple generate or spill what comes down the pipe.

> many hydro plants operate run-of-the-river and have no significant resivour

Williston Lake is the largest lake in British Columbia [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williston_Lake

Thanks for the additional context in this example. You're right that there are additional drawbacks if a finite reservoir is required.

When the reservoir runs low you can't just put in an order for a few km^3 to top up.

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