The site, operated by Whinstone U.S., hosts Bitcoin mining operations for three clients. Total power capacity of the facility is 750 megawatts, with around 300 megawatts currently in use. Contracted energy cost is US$ 0.025 per kWh.
The facility shown in the video appears to be using Bitmain Antminer S19 ASIC mining hardware, which is designed and manufactured in China.
So if they increase capacity by just over 60 percent:
edit:
Texas is a hotspot for Bitcoin mining operations, with miners like Applied Digital, Galaxy, Bitdeer, Cipher, Core Scientific, Hut 8, Riot Platforms, Marathon Digital, and Iris Energy all conducting mining operations in the state.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/hive-digital-moves-hq-texas-citing-supportive-climate-under-trump
A perfect example of green energy fantasies. While such a dynamic load can be useful during the day or during high wind situations, they are not energy storage. They do nothing at all to solve the problem of cold, dark, calm winter days and nights. And BT transaction processing is still needed on such days.
I applaud Bitcoin mining companies that minimize their costs by participating in such arrangements (I have clients in that Texas list), but proclaiming this as the solution to grid problems is utterly foolish hype.
We are encroaching on CTLaw’s “duty cycle fallacy”. We can greatly bias an asserted efficiency or inefficiency by artificially attributing the duty cycle of one thing to another thing.
The big example is to misallocate the duty cycle of solar or wind to the conventional alternative.
The cost of running a nuclear power plant is essentially the same per calendar day regardless of whether it is at 100% capacity for 24 hours or 50% capacity for 5 hours and 5% for the remainder. We arbitrarily require nuclear plants to act as peakers/backups for solar and wind we are imposing an arbitrarly low duty cycle on nuclear that’s actually caused by the inherently low duty cycle of solar and wind. But we do not impute that as a cost to solar and wind. Thus we get BS about how nuclear is more expensive than solar and wind.
A nuclear plant running an average of 10% capacity produces electricity at ten times the cost it would if running at 100%. But that’s the fault of mandating solar and wind baseload.
They are only addressing one side of the coin. Cost-effective grid stabilization is achieved by an industry that has: 1) high energy usage (like bitcoin mining); only in combination with 2) low capital costs (facts not in evidence).
and 3) low sensitivity to deferred action. Can bitcoin mining tolerate long delays in transaction processing on calm, overcast days? If not, at best this approach simply moves energy consumption around.
Green energy production tax credits need to die.
Which low capital costs? Mining capital costs or grid stabilization capital cost?
The simple answer is yes, miners can tolerate delays in transaction confirmations on calm cloudy days.
Mining, including hardware, real estate, grid and internet connections, other fixed costs.
I wasn’t specifically referring to miners themselves, but whether bitcoin mining as a whole can tolerate it. The target signature time is 10 minutes. I’d call that a NO.
The ability to turn mining systems on to help balance the grid at high green energy output does absolutely nothing to solve the lack of energy production when green energy output is low. Unless you tell me that mining hardware has advanced to the point of negative energy consumption.
In any Net Zero scenario, switching such loads is nothing but a shell game. If not trying to achieve Net Zero, the green energy would never be installed at all, eliminating this “need” entirely.
Let me add: throwing battery storage into the equation doesn’t change this. The ultimate (current) dispatchable storage of energy for grid operations is nuclear. Nuke plants are typically also capable of black starts. The closest thing to nukes are coal-fired plants, because you can make an enormous pile of coal beside the plant with no containment at all. It is not uncommon for a coal-fired power plant to have more than a month’s supply of coal on hand. Coal-fired plants also typically have black start capability. Oil-fired plants would be next, but I don’t think there are many left (any?). Big oil tanks are not easy to maintain to the government’s standards, and a few days storage would be typical.
Natural gas-fired plants never have more than a few seconds of pressure-stabilization storage. Gas-fired power, while currently cheaper than coal, and very much desired for their quick reaction times to grid load, have effectively no storage at all. If the pipeline dies (like in the Texas fiasco), they’re useless.
In a crisis, the grid literally cannot start up without coal and nuclear.
The target time is 10 minutes but it doesn’t mean every block confirmation time is 10 minutes. Sometimes it is 9 minutes, 11 minutes, etc. I have seen block confirmation times as high as 98 minutes. The time between blocks approximates a Poisson distribution, meaning shorter intervals are more common, but longer intervals can also occur.
The goal is not Net Zero. The goal is to find the cheapest sources of energy. Miners are agnostic about energy source, main concern is price.
I don’t get how what is being claimed can be true.
In order to solve blackout problems more generation is needed. Using excess power generated at low demand times does not change high demand issues.
How BTC can help is by making Utilities more money so they can invest in needed generation. But this generation needs to be nuke or power plants.
The blackouts are a political problem.