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Utility Targets Bitcoin Miners With Power Rate Hike (datacenterfrontier.com)
1sockchuck writes: A public utility in Washington state wants to raise rates for high-density power users, citing a flood of requests for electricity to power bitcoin mining operations. Chelan County has some of the cheapest power in the nation, supported by hydroelectric generation from dams along the Columbia River. That got the attention of bitcoin miners, prompting requests to provision 220 megawatts of additional power. After a one-year moratorium, the Chelan utility now wants to raise rates for high density users (more than 250kW per square foot) from 3 cents to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Bitcoin businesses say the rate hike is discriminatory. But Chelan officials cite the transient nature of the bitcoin business as a risk to recovering their costs for provisioning new power capacity.
Bitcoin miners are only making money speculatively. No reason the power company shouldn't treat servicing them the same way.
A new nuclear powered bitcoin mining rig has just been announced . Pre-book now. Deliveries expected by the end of this century.
Someone will eventually realize what a dumb idea it was. What a waste of resources just for the illusion of resources.
Not much else to say about this.
Bitcoin businesses say the rate hike is discriminatory
So what? There are only a very few things (race, ethnicity, etc) that you can't legally use to discriminate. Being a bitcoin miner is not one of them.
Someone please tell me why we don't hear from the climate change crowd whenever there's another BitCoin mining story posted. If anything would seem to be a needless waste of energy, BitCoins would seem to top the list...
"citing a flood of requests for electricity to power bitcoin mining operations. "
Tell the electric company you have to power an iron lung, and an electric kidney. What were you thinking?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Any new capacity probably actually costs more than 5 cents per kWh for customers of under 5-10 yrs duration, depending on energy source.
I've nothing to say about the rights or wrongs of this (you can call it either way) but I would like some of whatever Timothy's taking right now - I'd also like to stay awake around the clock for several days. :-)
So Timothy, what are you taking (and is it legal here in the UK) ?
More than 1 MEGAWATT per 4 square feet?
Can someone who's a proponent of both 1) this utility's rhetoric and 2) Net Neutrality, help me understand how those beliefs are reconciled? Shouldn't all users of that resource face the same pricing structure (which already scales up with consumption rates)?
This seems like an issue of how you want to allocate the costs of risk, not a terribly uncommon problem: Building the additional capacity will cost the utility a nontrivial amount of money, and if the demand that originally justified the buildout dries up, they won't exactly be able to return it for a refund(and, if they can't operate it profitably, its resale value is unlikely to be very exciting).
Unless one simply wishes to deny that, and pretend that this sort of capital investment is risk free, which is silly; the question is really just how the cost of the risk is paid: If you want the utility to bear the risk, giving you the ability to purchase or not purchase power from month to month as you see fit; they'll want to make up the cost of the risk by increasing the price. If you offer to take on the risk; but making a long-term commitment to purchasing a given amount of power, I'm sure they'd be happy to offer you a suitably lower rate.
This is only 'discriminatory' if, in fact, 'bitcoin businesses' are not a more volatile and hard to predict customer base than other electricity users; but the utility is just treating them as though they are. If they are in fact more unpredictable, it is only reasonable that the utility would want them to pay more: the rate you pay is basically their operating costs, plus the cost of the initial investment in building the generating capacity. If you are highly predictable, they'll be content to be paid back for that over the long term. If you might be gone in six months without a replacement, they need to be repaid faster. Not fundamentally different from paying more for credit if you are considered a lousy repayment risk.
Whenever someone finds a new & innovative way to make money, along comes the establishment with its hand out to take a cut of the action...
Be it government, utility, or otherwise.
Are you sure they are only bitmining? Call Austin, I think we found Dr Evil's lair.
Would it make sense to price power per kilowatt usage blocks? As an example: 0-9.9 kW is 5c/W, 10 kW - 19.9 kW 6c/kW, 20 kW - 29.9 kW 7c/kW, etc. Ignore the actual values, but instead think of the tiers. The idea would be to encourage people to try to keep within a certain threshold and 'penalizing' people "who just don't give a damn". For the people who can afford to buy less power hogging equipment or adjust the demand, then they can do so and for those below a certain income level, well they can probably get a break up to a certain threshold?
One thing that has been done by other power companies is to charge people less for using electricity during non-peak hours, as this helps reduce peak hour use and also help power generation avoid power ramp up and downs.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's uncouth that big businesses are charging more for power based on the usage type - unlimited power indeed!
250KW per sq-ft. times a 1000 sq-ft building gives 250 megawatts. That is a NSA size data center.
Yeaaahhhh....
"bitmining", that's the ticket...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sounds kneejerk to me... the explanation that is. I know that local power companies in my area are looking to raise rates on high demand users too. It has nothing to do with BitCoin and everything to do with stresses on an aging infrastructure.
Really? I thought my electric pricing was pretty cheap at somewhere around $.10/kWh. I wonder if they're a co-op and how much they're marking it up to get it to 3 cents.
high density users (more than 250kW per square foot)
Holy shit! That sort of power density puts a nuclear power plant to shame. Or has some journalist again mixed up their units?
In most industries with pricing tiers, the more you buy, the less you pay per unit.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Most people use electricity for utility: fridge, stove, ac, lights, heater, washer, dryer, entertainment, etc. But bitcoin mining is of zero utility.
Untrue, bitcoin mining is also heating. Depending on the weather it is of great utility. Think of it as a space heater that might pay for itself. Probably not, but it might.
ASIC & FPGA or you're doing it wrong. DO NOT USE GPU's lol.
Someone will eventually realize what a dumb idea it was. What a waste of resources ...
Actually people within the cryptocurrency community already realize that. These individuals support currencies based on Proof-of-Stake rather than Proof-of-Work with respect to constructing the blockchain.
Jeez, here it can cost $60K to get cable TV run a mile - WA electric will drop a few megawatts of capacity for free?
Higher rates seem much easier to handle, as long as restaurants and other high-risk businesses get the same deal, and there are sunset provisions.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The increased power capacity is probably really for indoor, environmentally controlled grow-ops in the areaâ"and not bitcoin mining. I suspect this is just a cover story.
An extra 1.6 cents per Kilowatt hour, 250kW, 720 hours in a month,
$0.016/kWh * 250 kW * 720 hours / month = $2,880 / month.
Monthly rent is high, but no where near $2,880 per square foot.
In the case of computing, inefficient power-consumption is lost in the form of heat. If you've got a computer using a fair bit of power and generating heat, then it may actually be providing secondary value in colder days. I don't bitmine, but I have transcoded a lot of video and if I leave the room closed I definitely notice a temperate difference.
This would be good in the winter for those with electric heating etc, where at least the "waste" is actually a useful by-product. In the summer though it actually adds to the problem because that may also result in running the house cooling systems (A/C) more.
Perfect timing for my new business model. Self storage warehouses and Bitcoin mining.
Have gnu, will travel.
We pay 40 cents per kWh if not more.
Would gladly take anything under 10 cents per kWh!
Increase the space of your Bitcoin 'farm'with non-electric consuming space - self-storage, indoor car parking, etc. How much power per square foot does a bitcoin farm use?
As a resident of Chelan County, a Bitcoin miner is welcome to install their devices in my (previously unheated) shop and utilize the balance of the 200 amp service currently installed. During the summers the waste heat can be routed outdoors. For an extra charge my irrigation water can be used for open loop ground source cooling.
I would expect this to apply to high frequency traders as well. And banks. F'n banks.
AMD / ATI got a huge influx of sales thanks to BitCoin mining 3 or 4 years ago, it lasted for 12 to 24 months, sales figures perked up, manufacturing probably had to be increased, cost of procurement of components maybe slightly dropped - all kinds of factors, due to an artificial increase in sales.
When mining with GPU's became a poor option, sales returned to normal, just for gamers. Many high end used cards hit the market, further reducing sales.
This was positive and negative for AMD - so if a power company goes and spends an inordinate amount of money increasing production, for something which may well dry up, then it's a risk which they are factoring in.
In some ways, yes it's unfair but it is logical. Also, the market will bare what can or can't be charged / paid. They'll either deal with the rise in cost or walk.
Hydro electric energy use has ethical issues. You are killing salmon and changing ecosystems. And if you consume more than neccessary then that electricity could have gone for other uses. Or fewere back-up natural gas plants might have been used. meaning less fracking. and so on.
So using it to produce wealth that doesn't actually change the GDP is highly unethical.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
To put this in perspective, a 1000 sq ft house might require a electric furnace rated for 15-30 kW (which will cycle on and off). The only homes drawing this much continuously will be server farms or grow houses. The Chelan Power District presentation indicates the surcharge would probably apply to any high density load, not just Bitcoin miners.
The Chelan Power District presentation indicates that the aggregate household load averages ~2.4 kW per house.
Yeah, its' a huge amount of power. Although given a collection of hot tub, kiln, electric furnace, sauna, and a few other things, you may hit it. Given CRTs and incandescent lights as well?
I will say, this is at 120 amp, and they did upgrade recently from the standard from 100 to 200. Now, that is to handle peak loads....
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The Grant Public Utility District is a public -- meaning government -- agency. Do you really want government agencies deciding some businesses should pay higher rates than others? Maybe under very specific circumstances, but I'd be very skeptical of this in general.
While the PUD talks about 'recovering costs,' there is a very good argument that what this is about is about the incumbent business interests -- in this case agriculture -- making the newcomers subsidize them by paying higher rates. These guys may be farmers in the sticks, but they aren't dumb, they've got political power and they see a group of newcomers coming to town with a bunch of money and they're figuring out how to make some money off them.
Number two cryptocurreny, Ethereum, will shift to proof of stake in around a year. Then it will be much less energy wasteful than Bitcoin.
It's not about selling kilowatts, it's about ensuring that your grid can deliver them to the customer.
In other words, you may well have to adjust the grid in an area to accommodate just one high-density user.
And who's going to pay for that adjustment? The energy company? His neighbors? Or the more-intense-than-average user?
If it concerned e.g. a bakery, you might amortise the changes to the grid over a ten-year period or so and charge them the standard tariff. Bakeries aren't very volatile.
But bitcoin mining operations are. They're decidely footloose, and they'll leave the instant their cost of moving shop is less than what they stand to gain from lower tariffs someplace else.. So there's a substantial risk they'll be gone next year if some other place decides it wants to sell off a bit of surplus power and undercuts your rates.
For that reason alone it's entirely reasonable to want to recoup the grid adjustment in a shorter period of time, through higher rates.
It's not about price-gouging bitcoin miners, it's about refusing to subsidise them with investment in free (for the customer) grid adjustments and risk not being able to recover.that investment.
That's what I said....though a lot more concisely.
I wonder how many times the police have showed up to investigate suspicious power consumption, hoping to find the next big pot bust, only to find a room full of ASIC's blowing heat all over creation.
Charge the businesses exactly what it costs to service them. Don't make profit happen over time - you are financing their operation that way. If you increase their startup costs they will think twice before investing in transient facilities and infrastructure. If they leave in a year so what - they footed the bill for the installation.
Money is something your parents give to you. Bit coin is how you use it to buy drugs online.
that's the difference.