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Comment by adamgordonbell | Hacker News Reader

Sell your miner as a heater. It will still be 100% efficient just also contribute to mining.

Heat pumps are 4-6X more efficient than resistive heaters, so if your goal is just to generate heat, you'll lose to your competitors.

In 2024 nobody should be advocating for resistive heating.

3x, and only when it's just mildly cold instead of actually cold. When it gets actually cold heat pumps stop working, or work at massively reduced efficiency.

Depends how cold. You can get models that work down to -15/-20F.

> High-HSPF heat pumps can handle cold weather. At temperatures below -20°F, cold climate heat pumps still provide dependable heat, and many models are 100% efficient at sub-freezing temperatures. Since they consume less electricity in moderate weather, heat pumps cost much less to operate than legacy systems like combustion furnaces and boilers. For building owners, that means enormous savings over time.

So unless you're planning to run them exclusively in the polar tundra, probably still better off with a heat pump.

[1] https://www.blocpower.io/posts/cold-climate-heat-pumps

This is Canada - it gets colder than -20F most winters. Sure you should have a heat pump if you live there, but there will be days when you cannot use them.

If you live right on the ocean shore you might get a mild enough climate to not need backup, but most of Canada is not that. (though the population may tend that way)

> If you live right on the ocean shore you might get a mild enough climate to not need backup, but most of Canada is not that. (though the population may tend that way)

There are high-efficiency heat pumps that you can use most of the time, and to my knowledge at least in Ontario, most of the heat pump setups I've seen use a heat pump with a back-up heater for days it gets too cold. And that's fine, it saves a ton of money over the course of the year vs. running resistive. 90% of people in Canada live within 100 miles (160km) of the US border and most people live in pretty moderate climates.

The low-temperature heat pumps I've seen work down to -20F (-30C). It's not -30C anywhere in Canada people live for much of the year. Even Winnipeg you'll only get into the danger zone a few weeks of the year.

If you live in Alert, feel free to stick to resistive.

Those really cold days matter though. You cannot say a HVAC system is good enough if it doesn't work on the coldest day while the system is installed. Even if it is only for 1 night every 15 years that you get down to -30C - that is not acceptable. Which is why you need some backup system. Even down in Iowa (quite a bit south of Winnipeg) I've seen -30C in the last 10 years.

In case I wasn't clear (and on re-reading, I may not have been) I mean it shouldn't be advocated for as a means of primary heating. Of course if you need it as a back-up then get it. However, using it once in a while materially changes the economics involved in both mining (negatively) and heating/cooling (positively).

The Nordics which have climate similar to Canada have the highest usage of heat pumps per capita in Europe (and naturally the world) [1]. People also report that they work in Calgary [2], for example.

[1] https://www.theecoexperts.co.uk/heat-pumps/top-countries

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Calgary/comments/ujmfdi/heat_pumps_...

They work most days. There are days they don't.

most people in the nordicts live in a mild climate. The Mississippi crosses the ocean and brings warm water to them so if you are not inland you don't see very much cold despite the northern location.

Their heat pumps incorporate back-up heaters. Into a single unit, that's rarely if ever used. It's sometimes called an auxiliary heater. In most climates backups are not required.

> The good news is that, in most climates, modern cold weather heat pumps no longer need this type of backup heat source to supplement the heat being produced by the heat pump itself. If the power remains on, the better types of heat pumps can operate succesfully at temperatures as low as -15°F (or -25°C)...

> Many modern high efficiency heat pump systems come with an integrated electric resistance heating system that functions as a back-up system at low temperatures.

You do see them in the cold because they work fine.

60% of Norwegian homes have heat pumps. Sweden and Finland are around 40%. I believe that's the highest rate in all of Europe. [3]

[1] https://www.ecohome.net/guides/3785/do-heat-pumps-need-a-bac...

[2] https://www.betterhomesbc.ca/products/do-i-need-a-backup-hea...

[3] https://reasonstobecheerful.world/heat-pumps-norway-efficien...

No... but functional currencies aren't free either.

If a miner could run a heat pump via a Stirling engine it'd be even better.

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