[mikeryan]

The problem with your argument and the point of the article is #6

Selling excess energy to bitcoin miners is fine. Having to pay them off when the grid is overloaded because they can’t turn their damn servers off for a week is what smells like the rest of the crypto bullshit.

[anonym29]

> Having to pay them off when the grid is overloaded because they can’t turn their damn servers off for a week is what smells like the rest of the crypto bullshit.

There seems to be a misconception here.

The miners are being paid rebates to do precisely that - turning off their servers. They're being given credits to not use electricity at times when demand is high and renewable supply is low.

This is part of what allows the renewable energy to make up a larger share of Texas' energy production in an economical way.

Without the ability to rapidly raise ("Quick, turn the bitcoin miners on!") and lower ("Quick, turn the bitcoin miners off!") energy demand in this manner, there is a lesser need for variable production (solar and wind) and a greater need for "constant" production (oil, gas, nuclear). Note that these types of production can be turned on and off the same way bitcoin miners can, but doing so is much slower and is actually so costly that it's cheaper to decrease the share of energy produced by "constant" production sources, increase the share of energy produced by variable renewables, and simply pay the bitcoin miners to turn their racks and racks of SHA-256 ASICs on and off at precisely the right times and places. It's WAY easier, cheaper, faster, and safer to make adjustments to the "demand" side than it is to make adjustments on the "supply" side.

I know it sounds really counterintuitive and complicated but this really is better for the environment - it leads to less burning of fossil fuels and lower costs for taxpayers than the alternative of not having any bitcoin miners in Texas.

Please give that article I linked a read if you have the time, that goes into much more depth about all of this.

[nullc]

You're getting confused by accounting here. Charging someone regular rates but then making payments for them to shut off during high demand is equivalent to the customer being charged lower rates for excess power.

The utility prefers the former model because it avoids normalizing low rates, avoids running into issues with most-favored-nation terms in contracts, gets them paid upfront while they pay out the correction only when it was actually needed, doesn't run into problems with "what if they don't actually turn off during the high demand but you still charged low rates the last N months", etc.

But what's happening is equivalent to "utility sells spare capacity to bitcoin miners at discounted rates" which is hardly remarkable.

[brutusborn]

The reason they are one of the first to turn off is _because_ they can turn their servers off easily. This is why crypto mining is perfect for this application.

Some industrial processes take days or weeks to fully shutdown / startup so quick shutdown isn't practical.

If your business was shutdown for the greater good, would you not expect some compensation?

[blangk]

Why should it only work one way? Aren't there subsidies across many industries in attempt to align common good?