06:12:17 https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/j0zzyn/some_interesting_speculation_on_power_prices/ 06:12:25 That thread has gotten literally no love and a report :( 06:12:42 I thought it was some really interesting speculation 06:13:31 The basic idea being that the widespread installation of renewable energy sources (like solar panels, wind, etc) will lead to the grid's load being out of sync with it's generation 06:14:00 so during noontime on a sunny day (for example), the power being generated in total exceeds the grid's capacity to consume it 06:14:12 Leading to temporary negative power pricing 06:15:35 this is already happening, but the frequency at the moment is so low that there's not enough incentive to design industries around it, but with solar panels getting more efficient / cheaper / widespread, we could experience sustained periods of negative energy prices that are effective to arbitrage by usually cost-inefficient processes 06:15:43 We already had negative oil prices this year, not surprised 06:16:20 The article mentioned dummy loads and cost-inefficient processes like desalination, but my mind immediately went to cryptocurrency mining 06:16:52 still a "dummy load" 06:17:00 is mining 'dummy'? 06:17:06 its a load that generates something 06:17:11 im not sure calling it a dummy load is appropriate 06:17:26 from thermodynamics point of view, it is :D 06:17:40 so all computers are dummy loads too 06:17:46 even servers being used for practical purposes? 06:17:58 That feels like an awfully broad definition of a dummy load 06:18:42 that's a philosophical question. All computers just produce heat in the end 06:19:03 I think defining a dummy load as such is so broad as to make the term useless 06:19:15 this is the case when the process is more important than the end result 06:19:15 which makes me reject that definition 11:14:35 for some people, that has always been the vision http://acpropulsion.com/index.php/news-media/61-ac-propulsion-tzero-the-godfather-of-modern-evs 11:14:59 the original idea behind the tchnology that went into the Tesla was to create a smart grid 11:15:19 EVs plugged into mains would soak up excess solar energy during the day 11:15:27 and feed it back at night 11:16:06 obviously any bank of batteries could do the same thing, but if you had millions of EVs in use, it would be decentralized capacity and all that other good stuff 11:16:23 minimal wear&tear on any individual car/battery 11:17:38 burning excess power into crypto mining is no different for solar than it is for the hydro power in China 11:17:50 except thta it doesn't need to be as geographically centralized any more 11:18:47 but if there's a practical way to store the power (batteries, molten salt tanks, whatever) then it's smarter to save the power for night time demand 11:19:21 in general of course, night time/off-peak demand is much much lower than daytime/peak 11:19:34 so you can still burn off a good chunk of it if you want to 13:45:38 yeah, the excess energy -> crypto storage is underway. Saw something on reddit some dude that works at a nat gas power plant was able to install btc mining farm onsight to sop up excess energy 13:48:04 Clearly this all calls for a Dyson sphere. 13:48:40 Then instead of pools DoSing each other, we'll get actual star wars. 14:16:31 cypherpunk-turned-death-star-proponent 14:40:30 we could just build a ringworld first, no need to go full sphere 14:42:06 and yeah, most oil rigs are also major sources of natural gas, which goes unused and is just burnt off 14:42:21 too expensive to capture and transport it, so it's just wasted 14:42:55 if you switched to on-site power generation and crypto mining, it would prob pay for itself too