A Coal Power Plant is Being Reopened For Blockchain Mining (cnet.com) 225
An anonymous reader shares a report: Sure, you could mine bitcoin on that old PC in your garage, or you could use a whole power station to do it. That's the idea behind the Blockchain Application Centre -- an Aussie tech initiative that will see one of the country's now-shuttered coal-fired power plants reopened to provide cheap power for blockchain applications. It's the work of Australian tech company IOT Group, which has partnered with local power company Hunter Energy on the project. According to The Age, Hunter Energy will recommission the Redbank power station in the Hunter Valley, two hours drive north of Sydney. Once the power plant is reopened (expected to be completed within 12 months), it will offer wholesale or "pre-grid" power prices to blockchain companies, allowing them to do things like mining cryptocurrencies, without having to pay retail power prices.
Yay Coal Power (Score:5, Insightful)
So not onlly are we going to waste tons of electricity, we're going to pollute now too.
Massive carbon tax would fix this (Score:5, Informative)
It's too bad Australia seems to be run by fossils these days though, so that won't happen.
Re:Massive carbon tax would fix this (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean these days? We were always proud of being in the big leagues of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the USofA when it comes to CO2 emssions per capita.
Sure we've dropped the ball the last 4 years but we want to retake our place above the USA.
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You have far less slavery than Qatar though, so you've got that going for you. CO2 is the least of Qatar's sins.
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Aussie fashion = shorts, singlet, and thongs. And a hat if you're smart.
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Re:Yay Coal Power (Score:5, Funny)
So not onlly are we going to waste tons of electricity, we're going to pollute now too.
Coal is the future. Coal powered power stations, coal powered cars, coal powered politicians. Dissing coal will get you sent to the gulag.
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Those are all polluting solutions. I prefer coal powered solar panels.
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Coal powered spacecraft.
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great, the gulag should be then a nice tropical beach, with all the melted iced and the temperature raised due to the CO2
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Don't forget the coal-fired nuclear reactors!
I have friends who own coal mines, they say those will work just great! They'll be the BEST coal-fired nuclear reactors!
MCGC!
(Make Coal Great for Corps)
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Next, we’re going to bulldoze the rainforest and plant tulips there.
In the South Seas! Stock in this new venture now available on 5% margin.
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At least the South Seas scam served a purpose - it was cooked up to refinance government debt, not that different in practice from state lotteries now that I think about it.
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And they should be a huge social pressure against them. But the issue is, many crypto mining companies do it where electricity is cheap ... because running on dirty coal.
Problem is, their companies don't sell anything, they just make money, and those who run this probably don't care much about their image.
The silver lining available here (Score:2)
There is a possible silver lining here. If we can 1) consolidate bit coin mining, 2) have them use power plant scale amounts of power, then we have a new resource which is concentrated waste heat. Bit coin gives off waste heat but when distributed no center may be large enough to make practical recovery valuable. But if a whole power plant is devoted to this then a new scale may be emerging.
They need to think about how to co-locate thermal power intensive industries. Some things like smelting iron proba
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1) That's a bad thing. The NICE part of bitcoin is that it's distributed. It's a feature!
2) It's WASTE heat dude.
But sure, they've been trying to harvest waste heat from power plants. I've heard some interesting ideas about using the heat gradient as a sterling engine and turning it into vibrations then converting that back into power.
They need to think about how to co-locate thermal power intensive industries.
They're going to co-locate where the damn coal is cheap. Where the land is cheap. Where the employees are cheap. Or do you think having a cheap bread baking oven is going
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Employees?
Mining is power intensive. It is capital intensive. It is not labor intensive. The only employees you need are one technician to maintain the equipment, one accountant-trader to turn the coins into conventional money to pay the bills with, and enough security guards to stop anyone absconding with your very expensive hardware.
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The only silver lining is that the coal won't be shipped through/by the Great Barrier Reef to be burned in India or China.
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So not onlly are we going to waste tons of electricity, we're going to pollute now too.
A coal plant has nothing on a gold mine. For all that BTC is wasteful, it's still far better than gold (from time to time, the power cost to get 1 ounce of gold exceeds the worth of that gold - ASIC mining is much less wasteful).
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Gold is at least useful in the long term.
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If you ask me the only benefit to actually mining ANY crypto currency is only to ensure the sale of power. We are not really seeing any net benefit beside wasting a lot of money of hardware and a lot of money on power consumption. But hey it's new and obviously it will be enough to take down the large banks that have been around since the days of napoleon....
Hmmm. So CC is really a clever creation of BIG POWER! And we are only now catching on....
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A closer read of the article reveals that the idea (and it is still an idea) was conceived by an entrepreneur who, you guessed it, has a financial sake in getting that particular coal plant restarted.
Coal power in Australia is not competitive, for the reasons you state: a trade deal with China makes panels cheap, and unused land is cheap and there is sunlight going free. Even this plan is part of broader plan to transition to solar on site at the coal plant.
In Australia we are treated to
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Someone who's not worth burning up mod points on needs to
1. Sober up.
2. Learn to read.
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You appear to "see" news and facts pretty much the way I'd expect someone being paid by Erdogan to spread anti-Kurd propaganda to "see" them, no surprises there.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is so pointless. All that energy, and all those computing resources, for nothing. What the hell is wrong with people?
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I fell the same way about soccer and it's world cup.
I mean, millions of people watching a small number of men kicking around a ball.
If only everyone in the world would just do whatever I think is sensible, and stop wasting resources.
Why the hell do people have the freedom to make their own choices in life?
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This is so pointless. All that energy, and all those computing resources, for nothing. What the hell is wrong with people?
Hardly a new problem - how else would you describe the pyramids. Well, at least they're cool to look at.
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It's not totally pointless, at least for the power company. Economically it's great.
Coal plants are awful in the current fast energy market: if you want to deliver power tomorrow at 11am, you better start firing the boiler now or it won't happen.
If you however have a always running baseload from the bitcoin mining, you can immediately react to fluctuating power needs by simply turning off the miners, or at least hibernate them. You cannot power up or down a coal power plant in seconds but you can do this wi
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This is so pointless. All that energy, and all those computing resources, for nothing. What the hell is wrong with people?
Are you talking about Crypto Currencies or Candy Crush?
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That's certainly true... but it was stupid the last time, it's stupid this time, and it'll be stupid next time. What exactly is your point?
God damn it (Score:5, Insightful)
God damn it, this fucking insanity has to stop. Not only has it impacted my ability to upgrade to a bitch'n graphics card but now they want to poison the air I breath for this shit?
Re:God damn it (Score:5, Insightful)
We really need to stop ALL new coal plants, or re-openings, from occurring. That should include ALL NATIONS.
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just tax the import from their nation
Yay! A trade war! why that is the very definition of a win-win situation, that never works out badly for anyone.
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No plants made of coal are known to exist.
And yet all coal are made of plants!
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We should be encouraging Pakistan to go to wind, solar, and yes, nuclear. If we are going to cut the CO2, we have to have all nations in on
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What does your desire for Pakistan to open a wind farm have to do with a plan to re-open an existing coal plant in Australia to exclusively power bitcoin miners?
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Sell their coal. Sell their coal plants. Sell the spare parts. Have their experts on site. Let other nations see what inviting in China can offer a nation.
Pakistan gets a power network for its military industrial complex.
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There is two ways out of this. One is Bitcoin depreciating substantially, making mining less profitable. The other is having an alternative market for compute power that pays better. Projects such as Golem [golem.network] and (this author's very own) BitWrk [bitwrk.net] are trying to achieve this.
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Perhaps more cryptocurrencies should be based on other concepts, like proof-of-storage, rather than proof-of-work. Proof-of-storage would be useful, as it would likely drive down the price of SSDs, benefiting everyone, in the long term.
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Like altcoin mining has driven down the price of GPUs?
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Proof-of-storage would be useful, as it would likely drive down the price of SSDs, benefiting everyone, in the long term.
I think you missed the concept of supply and demand. If you increase the demand, the price goes up.
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Proof-of-storage would be useful, as it would likely drive down the price of SSDs, benefiting everyone, in the long term.
I think you missed the concept of supply and demand. If you increase the demand, the price goes up.
It depends on the type of good. If something requires a high initial capital expenditure to start producing, but has a low marginal cost to manufacture, then having a higher demand can lower cost because the the manufacturer can spread the cost over more consumers.
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There is two ways out of this. One is Bitcoin depreciating substantially, making mining less profitable. The other is having an alternative market for compute power that pays better. Projects such as Golem [golem.network] and (this author's very own) BitWrk [bitwrk.net] are trying to achieve this.
The two big problems with Bitcoin are the enabling of illegal activity and the high use of energy by miners.
While having an alternative market means that computing power is being used for something more productive it doesn't actually fix either problem.
Whether a Bitcoin is worth $0.01 or $1,000,000 you can transfer $10k in Bitcoin for money laundering or a mob hit just as easily.
And an alternative market that pays better doesn't actually save any power, people will just turn from large-scale mining into lar
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He just identified the 'useful purpose', evading government controls.
If there is no mining there can be no transactions. The bad (power use for mining) has to happen to enable the good ('enabling of illegal activity' in the GP's parlance).
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Certainly money laundering does.
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Because an "alternative market for compute power that pays better" would just make even more money for this coal plant, I have a better idea: put the NSA to work on breaking the Bitcoin system itself, either the mining part or the blockchain part, to crash its value. Let mobsters kill each other over their suddenly emptied stores of value while millions of GPUs suddenly become available for cheap.
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poison the air I breath for this shit
Nope, just the air of her majesty's former criminals. ;-)
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God damn it, this fucking insanity has to stop. Not only has it impacted my ability to upgrade to a bitch'n graphics card but now they want to poison the air I breath for this shit?
Brother, you aren't kidding. I did not understand all the griping lately about video cards until last week when I looked at what a new one would cost. My R7850 from 2013 may actually have appreciated in value, and anything that would get me a meaningful performance increase over what was a $150 card 5 years ago costs $400+ today.
Re:God damn it (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think the reactions to this are based on left/right leanings, you may need to check your inner humanity. Polluting the every loving hell out of the Earth because you see a get-rich-quick scheme in front of you should be something we all mock, mercilessly, for the idiotic benchmark of greed mixed with stupidity that it is. I have to believe that anyone that doesn't understand that is lacking a fundamental ability to think through consequences.
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Are not coal plants heavily regulated for filters? It may release more CO2, but that isn't "polluting the hell" out of anything.
Re:God damn it (Score:5, Informative)
Are not coal plants heavily regulated for filters? It may release more CO2, but that isn't "polluting the hell" out of anything.
Today's filters do a good job of straining out particulates, but you still have gases. Not just the ever-popular CO2, but NOx and SO2, the stuff that creates smog in the Grand Canyon from Arizona's last remaining coal plant.
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There have been scrubbers for that for almost a century.
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myh "inner humanity" tells me use of fossil fuels has lengthened human lifespan, cured terrible diseases, improved quality of life, and uplifts nations out of poverty and starvation.
So you would take that away from people.
You fiend.
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And he gets a free +1 just for typing "capitalism" and "lefties foam at the mouth" while contributing absolutely nothing of value to the discussion?
A shame I've already posted and can't fix this...
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Nothing wrong with greed. It's how shit gets done.
Dirty money (Score:5, Funny)
Huh, is this some sort of competition to find the dirtiest of money?
He he he.... (Score:2)
Happy landing.
MAGA (Score:2)
Yikes (Score:2)
12 months. . . (Score:2)
Then again, it is mid April, 2018 and I still cannot buy web storage hosted on file coin's network [filecoin.io]. . .
A new parameter for the Drake Equation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A new parameter for the Drake Equation (Score:4, Funny)
A think we need to update Drake equation [wikipedia.org] and add a parameter for crypto mining.
I didn't know he was into Math, but Drake might have to collect his Spotify royalties with a bitcoin wallet in the future [qz.com]:
That means musicians like Drake, Justin Bieber, and Rihanna, who were Spotify’s most streamed artists last year, need to get comfortable with the idea that their royalties are going to be tracked on a blockchain—and maybe even paid out on one—before the fantasy of music on the blockchain takes shape.
WTF?? (Score:2)
I think the power company just wants to add "blockchain" to their name so the execs can cash out, but my quick back-of-napkin math makes me think it might actually work if they can fully sell it out. Assuming a 100MW plant, it would take US$25-40 million to get up and running, which would require $500/year/kW in rent for a 12-month payback, which equates to a US$0.05/kWh electricity savings to make it worthwhile.
But it seems like a lot of risk for something 12 months out before generating cash flow that is
INFINTE FACEPALM (Score:5, Interesting)
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Australia has been overtaken by green left lunatic ideology. We have been demolishing coal plants at a great rate which has given us power that costs 26c/kWh.
I doubt this idea will ever get up.
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Well, they said "you can't eat money" (Score:2)
Own power plant (Score:2)
I used to joke that some video cards require you to bring your own power plant, but this is ridiculous.
Hilarious (Score:3)
Will they... (Score:2)
bye bye (Score:2)
coalition (Score:2)
oh fuck me - the IdiOT Group, offshoot of the young liberals
the neoliberal hard right goons have found another excuse to keep coal going
sounds like a brain fart
want to make money while your sitting around being an entitled, fucking yuppy, we've got fake money
need something, but you're too fucking stupid to do it yourself, we've got slaves for hire
fucking selfies, make me a drone in clear plastic, then I'll be excited
Re:Bitcoin, a Leftist phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin seems to be more loved by the Libertarian sect, which doesn't seem to give a damn about environmental causes and thinks that polluting businesses should "self regulate" themselves. Yeah... because that worked so well back in the 1950's and 60's.
Earlier... (Score:2)
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Most of that good standard of living was used to contrast the West from Communism.
Everything was done to make the free West look amazing from the ~ 1945-1980's
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Yes, because the government was so worried about environmental protection in the 1950s and 60s... Biggest and worst polluted areas in the US are government sites where they enriched and refined nuclear weapon stockpiles.
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Bitcoin is now leftist libertarian? Back in 2016 it still was not merely right, but "extreme right"
There's no such thing as "leftist libertarian". That's like "capitalist Trotskyite".
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Steve Bannon claims to be a capitalist Leninist, after all...
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The problem is that you Libertards don't want to acknowledge any impact of your actions on others on account of your tendency to indulge in magical "there are boundaries only where they're convenient to me" thinking.
"Leftist", a Rush Limbaugh shibboleth (Score:2)
Leftists are boogeymen created by conservative talk show hosts.
I'd actually say that Bitcoin is a product of libertarians. The sort that don't think our monetary system should be left to the government. And yeah, "how do deal with pollution" gets you a variety of answers from that crowd.
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I'd actually say that Bitcoin is a product of libertarians. The sort that don't think our monetary system should be left to the government. And yeah, "how do deal with pollution" gets you a variety of answers from that crowd.
That's certainly where it started, but there just aren't that many of those guys. Bitcoin grew when it became the currency of choice for darknet, but that too is limited in size. Today the main use of Bitcoin is to sneak money out of China, and that's a vast market indeed. Of course, the people mining it don't care about any of that.
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Who told you that?
There is no 'extra production' from any of the worlds dams. It's all pretty much sold off, within environmental constraints (you can't let rivers go dry or regularly put walls of water down them). Excepting perhaps Iceland, but they built the thing to make aluminium, so not even there.
Whoever told you that bullshit had no respect for you. Terrible liar who thought you were stupid. Surplus power, in China?
Either that, or you just made it up on the spot.
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Gee, is it just slightly possible that all forms of power have drawbacks but that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and embrace the worst possible option that kills millions of innocent people every year to save a buck?
Re:Oh right, the power question (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not a huge fan of coal and reactivating this plant for digital jerking off is about the stupidest thing humanity can do. But you can only get to "millions" of innocent people if you make some serious extrapolations and assumptions of lung afflictions and global warming causing mass deaths. Meanwhile on the other side of the equation is the "save a buck" which has a very measurable impact on saving lives in 3rd world countries. More people in the world die due to lack of access to electricity than due to any pollution side effects of electricity production.
In fact, people in poor countries are so desperate for cheap fossil fuels that there are tragic mass deaths as people try to scavenge spilled gasoline from tanker trucks where they go in risking their lives for a cooking pot worth of fuel.
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One year restart time...One year is an eternity in cryptocurrency time.
At the end of all that, they're competing in a world power market, with an area that requires AC for datacenter cooling. So they'll effectively have to have power rates on the order of half the rates in a cold area, just to make up for heat pumping costs. Which doesn't even get into options like heating an office building with waste heat.
They could easily end up with a pile of coal, a refurbed plant and no customers. Hopefully the p
save us Elon! (Score:2)
You stupid fuckers' planet is headed for a special mention Darwin award!
oh wait...
crap.
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What 'proceeds'?
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I'm sure they would, if they could find a closed solar power plant (in a country that has "so much sunlight" though?).
It makes sense people interested in money (literally) will do what is most economical, with nary a thought about any other considerations.
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Building solar is much more expensive than re-activating an existing coal-fired plant.
Also, there is the "what do you do when the sun sets" question. Sure, you could buy batteries, but that only drives up costs.
Remember, this is an off-grid power plant - it will power dedicated Crypto Currency "miners", the power will never go on the grid, will incur no distribution surcharge, and will not be taxed.
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Yeah, like gaming is 10 times better...
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STFU Ivan.