
A solution to Bitcoin’s energy waste: Use it to warm buildings - xTWOz
https://www.fastcompany.com/90268985/a-solution-to-bitcoins-energy-waste-use-it-to-warm-buildings
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ascar
It makes something terribly wasteful a little bit less terribly wasteful.
Especially as the generated bitcoin "value" is still 99% speculation.

That heat generation must have terrible efficiency ratios, electricity is the
most ineffecient general source of heat in the first place and these things
require additional energy to transport the heat they generate away (i.e fans)
so they stay functional. I can't think of a more inefficient way of generating
heat. Maybe some people here have fun coming up with more ineffecient heat
sources.

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gus_massa
> _these things require additional energy to transport the heat they generate
> away (i.e fans)_

The 100% of the energy of the fan is eventually transformed to heat. The wind
is slowed by the viscosity and transformed to heat, the friction in the
bearings produces heat directly, the sound is absorbed by the walls and
transformed to heat, even if it has a nice led the small amount of light is
absorbed after a few reflections and transformed to heat.

So a fan is 100% efficient transforming electricity to heat, and a bitcoin
miner is also 100% efficient transforming electricity to heat. [1] You can
discuss which one has a better side effect, if it's more useful the wind of
the fan or the blockchain security, but both are equally efficient to produce
heat.

[1] The loss of using electricity for heat is that in the electric plant it is
not possible to transform he 100% of the heat to electricity. (The
transformation in the other direction is easy.) You can use the electricity in
a heat pump to try ro regain part of this loss. And also remember that the
transportation of the fuel to each building is not free, so there is some loss
in the alternative method of heating. (Assuming you want to compare
oil->transportation->heat to oil->electricity->heat. Comparing
hydroelectric/nuclear/wind/whatever is more difficult.)

~~~
ascar
You can learn something new every day :)

I still wonder what the efficiency loss is on actually capturing the heat here
so it is usable elsewhere while the building where it's generated stays cool.
I guess most of the heat will be lost on the surface area of the building

I mean in district heating you use some closed, well isolated system. Though
maybe they use water cooling and get a closed system with that.

