Bitcoin Miners Shut Off Rigs as Texas Power Grid Nears Brink - Slashdot
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Bitcoin Miners Shut Off Rigs as Texas Power Grid Nears Brink
Nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin miners in Texas have shut off their machines as the companies brace for a heat wave that is expected to push the state's power grid near its breaking point. From a report: Miners such as Riot Blockchain, Argo Blockchain and Core Scientific, who operate millions of energy-intensive computers to secure the Bitcoin blockchain network and earn rewards in the token, flocked to the Lone Star State thanks to its low energy costs and liberal regulations on crypto mining. The state has become one of the largest crypto-mining hubs by computing power in the world. "There are over 1,000 megawatts worth of Bitcoin mining load that responded to ERCOTs conservation request by turning off their machines to conserve energy for the grid." Lee Bratcher, president of Texas Blockchain Association told Bloomberg in an email response. "This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use." Miners may see a drop in profitability as the heat wave keeps their machines off by sending energy prices soaring and further stressing the state's power grid. The miners are already struggling to repay debt and raise additional capital with Bitcoin prices in sharp decline.
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ABC News adds:
The call for Texans to voluntarily conserve their electric use comes as scorching temperatures overtake the state and electricity demands have surged. As of Monday, the heat index for Austin is predicted to be 111 degrees, with predictions for 109 degrees in Houston and 105 degrees in Dallas.
ERCOT appealed for conservation from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday,
The Monday appeal comes due to record high electric demand and low wind, ERCOT said in the statement, as wind generation is shown to be at less than 10% of its capacity.
ERCOT suggests residents and business owners turn up their thermostats one to two degrees and postpone running major appliances or pool pumps to conserve during peak hours.
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This heatwave is nothing. It's only 115F outside as I type this, here in sunny Arizona.
Back in 1990, we got up to a high of 122F and the airplanes couldn't even take off because the air could no longer create enough lift. Now THAT was a hot heatwave.
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Back in 1990, we got up to a high of 122F and the airplanes couldn't even take off because the air could no longer create enough lift.
I remember a day like that, arriving in Phoenix for a business trip in the evening. I missed the high temperature, but the low for the night was 93F, IIRC. A colleague of mine was there a little earlier than I and got stuck waiting for it to "cool" down before they could take off.
I got to spend the next morning walking 150,000 sq ft of roof surveying equipment. The roof was rolled asphalt painted with a reflective aluminized coating, making it seem like there was one sun above and one sun below. I literally thought I might die. And I had gotten up on the roof first thing to beat the heat, finishing before noon and well before the afternoon high. I was younger then, I don't think I would do that now.-
I work outside, on the East Coast, and my heart goes out to anybody that works on a roof here ⦠let alone in Arizona or Texas.
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Yikes! Downtown LA reached 120+F twice in the past decade. I could only imagine what the vallies and desert must've been like.
120F disables airplanes? O_o
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Take off speed for a aircraft is based on air density and weight.
Minimum runway length is based on take off speed, weight, engine performance and safety margins
Engine performance is based on air density and temperature.It's quite possible hot days in high elevation airports can ground planes. I don't believe there is a specific temperature limit though
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Back in 1990, we got up to a high of 122F and the airplanes couldn't even take off because the air could no longer create enough lift.
It isn't primarily lack of lift that prevents take-off in high temperatures, it's engine performance with hotter ambient air. The lower density of the hot air means you can't burn as much fuel and get less power output. In higher temperatures at high altitude, you get reduced engine power output and lack of lift from the rarefied air at high altitude, the so-called "hot and [wikipedia.org]
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ABC News adds:
The call for Texans to voluntarily conserve their electric use comes as scorching temperatures overtake the state and electricity demands have surged. As of Monday, the heat index for Austin is predicted to be 111 degrees, with predictions for 109 degrees in Houston and 105 degrees in Dallas.
ERCOT appealed for conservation from 2 to 8 p.m. Monday,
The Monday appeal comes due to record high electric demand and low wind, ERCOT said in the statement, as wind generation is shown to be at less than 10% of its capacity.
ERCOT suggests residents and business owners turn up their thermostats one to two degrees and postpone running major appliances or pool pumps to conserve during peak hours.
The wind capacity is sort of misleading, wind is always at its lowest this time of day. It is lower than other days at this same time, so 10% at noon is low compared to say 30% at noon. Wind peaks overnight.
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Coming up when the an excuse doesn't make it misleading.
The nation's largest wind farms are in fact not providing significant power. That-
Ugh, I accidentally hit submit.
Sure you're right, it NORMAL for there to be no wind power when it's mostly needed. That fact that wind normally isn't all that great doesn't make it misleading to point out it's really sucked this month.
We've had no storms and no rain for about a month, just still, hot air. Which means no wind power and no hydro.
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Mmm... Texas... Has anyone thought of trying solar power? Might be worth a try.
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There is about 10GW of solar. It is running at capacity. But wind IS down. Normally it does go down during the day to around 8-10GW, but these past couple of days it is dropping to near zero due to high pressure. A fairly typical day in summer nets 20GW of power from wind/solar. At night it stays near that with just wind. So we are pulling around 10GW more than typical from excessively hot weather and missing 10GW of wind making a 20GW deficit that is being made up by nat gas I assume.
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Damn hippie:)
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The ERCOT dashboard (https://www.ercot.com/) is actually decent insofar as it shows the basic info, and isn't super cluttered.
And shows that the solar generation is going up as wind is going down. I presume some generalized relationship there, but I dunno. Nice to see that about 15% of TX electrical is coming from solar + wind (using their figures from today). Seems like TX would be in a good position to say double their installed wind, maybe triple their installed solar. And again double their nuclear (now at ~10%) . Boom, making huge strides towards carbon neutral, and importantly getting to some price stability.
I would think average Texans if anyone are pretty tired of boom.bust cycles around petroleum. Especially having their chain yanked by the likes of Russia, Iran, Suadi Arabia, Venezuela, and so on.
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Of course as the temperature increases, the conversion efficiency of solar panels decreases.
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Solar doesn't have to be photovoltaic. There's other ways of capturing energy from the sun, especially somewhere as hot & sunny as Texas.
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It's a real factor, but let's put some numbers behind it :
To pick a worse case scenario, suppose we've got a solar panel temperature coefficient [solar.com] on the high end, of -0.5%/C. And we've got the highest temperatures seen by them -- 65 Celsius, 149 degrees Fahrenheit.
That works out to an efficiency loss of 20% -- significant, but it's not like it makes the solar panel useless. And remember, this is a worst-case scenario.
Picking a case where the solar panel has a temperature coefficient of -0.3%/C and 130 degr
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They would need to install wind power offshore. The weather patterns on land - or if you want to dare to say it: the general climate, is not in favour of land based wind power.
Perhaps with more modern installations that reach higher, and perhaps with cherry picked locations, you could improve that a bit. E.g. a side of a hill that faces the general wind direction, the wind going uphill usually speeds up considerable.
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> Nice to see that about 15% of TX electrical is coming from solar + wind (using their figures from today).
On AVERAGE wind is 20%. Some times it's zero, sometimes it's 25. That's the thing about wind - it's nice to have when it feels like coming around. Definitely a good thing to have, just don't ever depend on it.
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Solar can be somewhat complementary to wind, but the issue comes at twilight. Your AC unit continues to have to struggle even as the sun starts to set, due to residual heat. And people all tend to follow a fixed routine: they come home in the evening, turn on lights, run appliances, play a computer game, turn the AC down to sleep, etc.
So there's a big load spike, and it hits around the time solar irradiance starts dropping off. And wind doesn't always pick up in time to help in conditions like this because
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That's why grid-scale batteries are used in places like Australia. They react automatically to load demands (milliseconds), and can stabilize grid supply for hours if sized appropriately. That is plenty of time to bring on other producers (gas, hydro), and if ERCOT wasn't backward they could also import from other regions.
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You want price stability? Maybe is Texas would stop being so... Texas and actually connect to the North American power grid, which is designed to balance loads across the country for exactly this reason instead of going it alone and thus being affected by every local weather phenomenon.
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But if TX had adequate baseline power how would ERCOT monetize shortages? Silly.
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Texas has two nuclear power plants [nrc.gov], with two units each: Comanche Peak and the South Texas Project, 40 miles SW of Fort Worth and 90 miles SW of Houston respectively.
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How about some solar panels?
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This is Texas we're talking about, right? Since when did Texans ever conserve anything? Most of them will probably increase their use just to show how Texan they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Theyâ(TM)ll just Rolling Coal ERCOT by cranking the AC with the windows open.
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