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Bitcoin Backlash as 'Miners' Suck Up Electricity, Stress Power Grids in Central Washington (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Public hearings for rural electric utilities are rarely sellout events. But the crowd that showed up in Wenatchee two weeks ago for a hearing about Bitcoin mining in Chelan County was so large that utility staff had to open a second room with a video feed for the overflow. The turnout wasn't surprising. Chelan County, along with neighboring Douglas and Grant counties, has been at the center of the U.S. Bitcoin boom since 2012, when the region's ultracheap hydropower began attracting cryptocurrency "miners."
[...] As a result, an area famous for apples, wheat and conservative politics has been transformed into a kind of cyber-boomtown, with Bitcoin mining operations that range from large-scale, state-of-the-art warehouses to repurposed cargo containers to backyard sheds. By the end of this year, according to some estimates, the Mid-Columbia Basin could account for as much as 30 percent of the global output of new Bitcoin and large shares of other digital currencies, such as Litecoin and Ethereum. But as in any boomtown, success has come at a cost. As the cryptocurrency industry morphs into larger, more energy-intensive operations, the Basin's three public utilities districts (PUDs) are reassessing how they deal with it, and whether they can -- or should even try to -- keep up.
[...] As a result, an area famous for apples, wheat and conservative politics has been transformed into a kind of cyber-boomtown, with Bitcoin mining operations that range from large-scale, state-of-the-art warehouses to repurposed cargo containers to backyard sheds. By the end of this year, according to some estimates, the Mid-Columbia Basin could account for as much as 30 percent of the global output of new Bitcoin and large shares of other digital currencies, such as Litecoin and Ethereum. But as in any boomtown, success has come at a cost. As the cryptocurrency industry morphs into larger, more energy-intensive operations, the Basin's three public utilities districts (PUDs) are reassessing how they deal with it, and whether they can -- or should even try to -- keep up.
Is there any evidence of intelligent life on Earth?
I hope the Bitcoin mining hardware and its installation conforms exactly to the local electrical code. Also, home users of more than a certain number of kWh per month should expect to pay more per kWh. Bitcoin is interesting, but it's a horribly wasteful way of transacting business.
200A at 240V (what most US houses have) can mine a lot of coin. Remember that amps are PEAK load, and most houses use maybe 1/10 of that on average through a day. So there's still room for Bitcoin mining even with average electrical service.
The electrical costs of most manufacturing is less than the labor cost, which has long been the reason for outsourcing
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
If weed is legal, why do the grow-ops need to be indoors and using grow-lites?
A bit hypocritical to want to charge Bitcoin miners for how they use electricity while at the same time arguing that its none of ISP's business how their data pipes are used, no?
Is that something like the "la-ser"? Will it help me get my "one million dollars"?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I am not convinced that bitcoin mining is consuming as much as they claim.
it just doesn't add up.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Not really -- the Chinese "miners" in question seem more ignorant than evil.
I remember getting into an argument here about four years ago about this problem with Bitcoin- that "mining" coins is based on everyone racing to use as much electricity as possible, and the number of kilowatt-hours burned per generated coin increases with time, as part of the design. "ATMs use electricity too" was the consensus opinion.
Now we have a "currency" that gets "mined" using more electricity than Ireland uses. The wattage devoted to this crap has increased sevenfold during the past 12 months. People only use it as an investment, making it useless as a currency. "Everyone accepts it as payment" doesn't mean anything when everyone who has it is too scared to spend it.
If you use the peak load 24/7, as you said, then you should get 1/10 of that at the rate everybody else pays for the same service. The other 9/10, you should pay significantly more.
They can also add terms like “residential load profile” which means they only provision 10% of capacity. But, that is really peanuts— limiting a 10,000 square foot warehouse to 150kVA rather than the 3MVA they would like is much more effective.
Last time I looked, it was dark at night.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Secured glass ceiling greenhouses.
Hopefully the 'bubble effect' can be contained to this particular boil so that when it pops the pus only gets on the playas messing around with it.
A bit hypocritical to want to charge Bitcoin miners for how they use electricity...
You are missing the point. Nobody really cares what they use it for, what they care about is that there is suddenly a huge and unsustainable demand for electricity in a region which lacks the infrastructure to deliver it without massive price increases for everyone. The network equivalent would be someone in your neighbourhood running a small server farm which completely sucks up all the local bandwidth so that your network connection gets slowed down and the cost to the ISP to upgrade it would mean that you would have to pay much more for your connection.
ISPs solve this problem by having tiered data plans: you pay more if you want to use more and if you want more than the maximum amount then you will need to negotiate with the ISP for the price. This way those using insane amounts of data will pay for it. The same should happen here for electricity. The only reason bitcoin is the issue is because it can sponge off the network more easily than say an aluminium smelter which would need special connections to be provided.
Orders of magnitude different in power-draw...
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The electrical costs of most manufacturing is less than the labor cost,
That depends on what you are manufacturing. If you are making iPhones, the labor will cost more. If you are making aluminum ingots, the electricity will cost more. So Apple manufactures in Shenzhen, China, while Alcoa manufactures in Wenatchee, Washington.
There's a snag in that this is a highly conservative area. The thought that they might have to have regulations put in place probably causes a lot of bed wetting.
You have to connect your offline wallet somewhere to 'spend' the currency in it. If the infrastructure is fried, the exchange won't be running.
Go out in the desert in the southwest, buy cheap land, build a solar or wind farm, no transmission wires, bitcoin mining on site, less than wholesale priced electricity. Seems obvious.
J
Nor will any other form of electronic payment; but BTC is distributed; 90% of the servers could burn, and it'll still run.
Thanks for your input, George III.
Chia coin?
I'm holding out for PetRock coin. Maybe Ty can get into this and we can all get rich with Beanie Coin!
It's never totally legal, as in non-regulated. Here the proposals include a limit of 4 plants that have to be non-visible to the public and originally had a height limit as well.
Depending on how the taxes go, it may still be profitable to sell on the black market. It'll take a while for industry to ramp up as well so at first they'll probably be a shortage.
There's still a black market in tobacco and alcohol here as well, not to mention certain drug store drugs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If it doesn't run where you need it, when you need it, it might as well be 100% destroyed.
If a person is serious about being prepared for a disaster of any kind, they will have a reasonable supply of cash and physical gold/silver on-hand.
It also isn't one weird dude with a box truck full of strange motherboards that only have display adaptors.
Real businesses that employ people, pay taxes, etc.
You dog turd (is this sort of closing part of your peoples' culture? I don't mean to be insensitive)
Typically the problem is peak consumption.
In many places (at least in Europe), electricity companies offer electricity at varying rate. This is typcially used by those needing a lot of electricity, such households using electric heating or factories. If you have an electric boiler for hot water (common in Europe in rural areas since natural gas is available on-site mostly only in cities or near gas fields), you can heat the water during a few hours the electricity company supplies you at the low rates (the contract usually specifies a minimum amount of hours per day that the electricity company has to supply you at the low rate) and then use it during the day.
If bitcoin miners would get electricity contracts with variable rates, both side could profit: The miners could cut costs by mining only during off-peak hours (maybe 20 hour per day). The electricity company would profit by demand being more even. At noon, the electricity would got to household for cooking and air conditioning, at other times it would got to the miners.
In the US, this model works well for other energy-intensive industries, such as aluminium smelting. Why not do the same for bitcoin mining?
Which is ironically the exact opposite way to how commercial pricing works. Most large companies (reads employers) pay something close to wholesale while also being charged for reactance. The problem here is the local bitcoin mining rig doesn't actually support any jobs or the local economy so the incentive structure pays down.
So what are you going to do? Fold? Kick all local industry in the balls? Fight a lawsuit for preferential treatment?
Or just guns and ammo
That particular solar flare will make most everyone dead. No electricity equals no more mechanization, farming with animals again, mass starvation when tractors don't make food and trucks don't deliver it, etc. Survivors will be the cannibals.
they're paying for their electricity, what's the problem?
Bitcoin at this point could fail on a whim, and it would be a few news articles for a week or two before it was forgotten. Not so with fiat currency as it currently exists.
That's a big difference, and it's part of the definition of what a 'currency' actually is that makes it so.
But as to your science fiction fantasies, the movie has been made, everybody enjoyed it, but it's science fiction.
non-Bitcoin industry
There's no reason to be redundant.
There's also proof-of-stake coins like Reddcoin.
Disclaimer: I own between zero and nine quintazillion Reddcoins.
#DeleteFacebook
not enough sunlight in washington ive heard. while here in las vegas they grow indoors because the heat will kill the plants, and quality of course.
That's exactly how it works with PG&E in California. I think it's 3 tiers of usage, with Summer having a different tier system because air conditioners are the biggest strain. I think I heard that at one point, indoor pot grows were estimated to be 3% of the draw from their grid. Bitcoin up there in Washington is making indoor pot grows look... welll... no pun intended but... greener.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Unless they paid for the electricity in advance then it is not "paid for" and therefore they can increase the price for the largest consumers if they want to.
Simple as that. Sure you can make money, but we are wasting so much electricity on essentially nothing, a fiat currency with no true backing except for all the graphics cards and electricity wasted producing it. Once the truly rich are ready to suck out all the wealth at least it should die down and maybe our electricity and processing power can be used for something productive.
Industry? Doesn't industry require some sort of output of goods, services, or materials? I don't think waste heat counts ...
The output of non-Bitcoin industries are goods and services which can be used by consumers or other industries. What goods or services are produced by Bitcoin mining?