Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to provide power

Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by idiotsecant on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @12:37AM (#39271148)

While I mostly agree, there are subtleties here. Due to transmission capacity inefficiencies there are places in the grid where generation exceeds available load and power pricing drops very low or runs negative in price. For example, there are areas in California where a combination of physics and politics causes generation to have nowhere to go. Under these conditions I dontnhave much issue with people mining bitcoin. If there were more productive loads that could be utilizing that power, they would be.

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by JumpCrisscross on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @12:50AM (#39271224)

> Under these conditions I dontnhave much issue with people mining bitcoin

At a penalty rate, sure. The problem is those negative rates invite productive power users. If you immediately balance them with useless crap, you never get the productive stuff.

There is an analogy to Dutch disease, except with power prices: crypto and its ilk are the disease.

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by wesapien on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:27AM (#39272175)

Can you provide examples of productive stuff

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by laurencerowe on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:55AM (#39272334)

Aluminium smelting.

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by yetihehe on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @07:33AM (#39273522)

- Water desalination

- CO2 scrubbing

- Making synthetic fuel out of CO2, or any kind of "storage fuel".

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by ttyprintk on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @08:24AM (#39273922)

- pumping water uphill

- splitting water for fuel

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by menschmanfred on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @05:21AM (#39272771)

And those locations should either attract good use cases like data centers or should be incentive to solve this issue in a way that we can use it.

Like building more power lines or converting it into transportable energy like H2.

Bitcoin plays in a different market and does the opposite to this .

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Re:Crypto mining company loses bid to force B.C. Hydro to pr... by idiotsecant on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @11:22PM (#39284464)

Should? So why don't they?

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