Power Plant Brought Out of Mothballs for Blockchain Usage

DooKey

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Hunter Energy in Australia is bringing one of their coal-powered power plants out of mothballs to help establish a wholesale energy zone for blockchain projects/companies. Not many blockchain operations exist in Australia because of their high electricity prices, but this plant is coming back online to offer power at wholesale for the blockchain. The plan is to turn the area near Singleton into a blockchain silicon valley. Chalk this one up to build it and they will come -- blockchain field of dreams.

"With these current prices, by having a blockchain application centre behind the grid offers cheaper power. It offers the potential to create a new Silicon Valley in Australia," he said.

"We’re offering services so clients can build data centres where they can get cheaper power."
 
150MW of capacity. 8 cents daytime, 5 cents night time rates. WOW. It'll be interesting to see if other power companies pick up on this trend. I'm betting that there's quite a few powerplants that have extra capacity that they'd love to sell on-site.
 
Notice they are not installing windmills or solar panels to provide cheap electricity.


For new construction, renewables are getting pretty damned close price wise compared to traditional generation. It won't be long until they are the cheaper alternative for new construction.

This - however - is not new construction. The capital investment in this plant has already been made, so now they just have to factor in operating costs. Based on that, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.
 
Notice they are not installing windmills or solar panels to provide cheap electricity.
Notice they aren't installing a power plant either. They're taking an already existing plant that was left for dead and just feed it coal. Coal is cheap, which we already know this. Most likely that coal plant was replaced with windmills, panels, or even nuclear. Though I doubt nuclear.

How many abandoned windmills or solar panels you see laying around for these guys to pick it up and start using it?
 
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This - however - is not new construction. The capital investment in this plant has already been made, so now they just have to factor in operating costs. Based on that, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

You would think this would be so obvious from the title of the post so as to not bear repeating...but never underestimate confirmation bias.
 
Edit... looks like I spent too long on this as a few other people made this point already :)

Notice they are not installing windmills or solar panels to provide cheap electricity.

They are going to use an already-built coal plant that was shut down. I'm not sure how installing new generation equipment, i.e. a wind or solar farm, versus re-using this plant would ever beat the cost... but neither of us are privy to that info.

Also, from the article:

Hunter Energy is also investigating the potential of expanding Redbank beyond coal.

"We’re exploring battery and solar on the site as well as part of the transitional energy change," he said.

--

So this power plant is going to run on an island off the grid and they will use step-down power from the unit auxiliary transformer to power the datacenter? It sounds like it and would be a bit of a first.

The deal, the first of its kind in Australia, would put the centre ‘behind the grid’, giving it direct access to wholesale electricity prices to avoid additional costs from the retailer, transmission, and being connected to poles and wires.

Bonus points if someone can come up with a new cryptocurrency that has the word "dirt burner" in it.
 
Good for them. Who cares about future generations (of people and everything else)? This is a great example of the free market. Use a cheap source now, don't factor in environmental costs and make big money now...after all you can always use the money to buy air (a la The Sheep Look Up) and water and anything else. And, just like the Pharaohs, you can take all that wealth to the afterlife.

So will all these new mining farms be using ASICs or GPUs?
 
150MW of capacity. 8 cents daytime, 5 cents night time rates. WOW. It'll be interesting to see if other power companies pick up on this trend. I'm betting that there's quite a few powerplants that have extra capacity that they'd love to sell on-site.

I'm at .04 at night during the winter. Sometimes .03.


Meh
 
fg6HCoi.gif


when i hear "blockchain"...
 
I'm at .04 at night during the winter. Sometimes .03.


Meh

Heh. All costs totaled up (transmission, generation, taxes and fees) we're at about 25c per KWH here in mass. You can't even qualify for time of use billing unless you have a very high minimum monthly usage. 3000kwh if I recall. I couldn't even use that if we got two electric cars...

It costs more in the winter than in the summer because we did the right thing, and transitioned away from coal, but the idiots didn't expand natural gas pipeline capacity to make up for it.

Power is expensive enough in the summer, but in the winter home hearing season natural gas shortages drive up power costs.

Every time someone tried to expand much needed pipeline capacity idiots go out and protest.

Fuckers even protested running power lines from Montreal in order to buy CLEAN HYDROPOWER.

I'm all for clean energy, but when we already pay many times more than other states for power, you have to be realistic about it.

I bet this is why almost no one has central air at home in New England, despite the fact that we get humid hot and sticky summers.
 
Notice they are not installing windmills or solar panels to provide cheap electricity.

To add to Z's earlier post:

The coal industry has one of the most powerful lobbies in that nation, so regardless of the cost question, it's gonna be used as a bailout of sorts.

The politicians there are quite behind the rest of the civilized world in this area because of politics involved, but solar as a residential solution is extremely successful due to attractive cost combined with the ridiculously high prices charged for electricity there.

And as mention, new construction is showing excellent growth for modern renewable solutions, despite the efforts of some corrupt politicians.
 
I'm working on an oceanic biofuel blockchain factory powered exclusively by stingray hide.


I was going to say you're being an asshole for using stingray hide. But since you're using blockchain technology, its gotta be all around good. blockchain = good
 
when i hear "blockchain"...

Meh - don't confuse crypto currency with blockchain. Blockchain as a technology actually has lots of good uses outside of autonomous decentralized crypto-currencies. Uses that don't require the power outputs of small countries either.

I think there is plenty of hype and snake oil with a lot of crypto-currencies, but block chain as a technology has many other far more interesting (to me) uses.
 
Oh Good, all those Hippies in BC protesting the Pipeline can really suck it. What are they going to do when coal shipments increase in BC, driving up ship traffic

In one year the amount of coal they ship out does more damage than any pipeline or Oil Sand refining.
 
Notice they are not installing windmills or solar panels to provide cheap electricity.
you don't understand what it means to "mothball" something, and just as much to bring it out of mothballs, do you?
 
Just remember kiddos, this is also the country where they want to spend, err, give 500million to burn brown coal (the filthiest thing you can burn), here to then ship 3 tons of hydrogen to japan. Whoopie! Fuck these cunts, we're awash in solar power and they still want to burn coal.
 
Good for them. Who cares about future generations (of people and everything else)? This is a great example of the free market. Use a cheap source now, don't factor in environmental costs and make big money now...after all you can always use the money to buy air (a la The Sheep Look Up) and water and anything else. And, just like the Pharaohs, you can take all that wealth to the afterlife.

So will all these new mining farms be using ASICs or GPUs?

I take it that you have no idea that coal burning power plants are way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way cleaner than they used to be. In the US, they had to retrofit the older plants with newer equipment to make it so. This was on top of the already crazy regulations.

When you see a coal power plant, there will not be any visible black smoke coming out of them as is apparently the general idea that most people have about them.

And check this one out. They are using the CO2 to help pump more oil from the ground:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...the-way/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e9a3fbd306e2

And check out this.
https://www.timesrecordnews.com/sto...finds-carbon-dioxide-not-pollutant/101322116/
 
Just follow the cryptographically signed road! Just follow the cryptographically signed road!
 
Wait for it. Blockchain is now going to become the enemy of environmental groups.
Im ok with that. Kill it with the emotion based propganda that I've watched erode things I love my whole life. At least it is something I dont like keeping the sheep occupied.
 
I take it that you have no idea that coal burning power plants are way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way cleaner than they used to be. In the US, they had to retrofit the older plants with newer equipment to make it so. This was on top of the already crazy regulations.

When you see a coal power plant, there will not be any visible black smoke coming out of them as is apparently the general idea that most people have about them.

And check this one out. They are using the CO2 to help pump more oil from the ground:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...the-way/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e9a3fbd306e2

And check out this.
https://www.timesrecordnews.com/sto...finds-carbon-dioxide-not-pollutant/101322116/
Funny guy. Clean coal is bullshit pure and simple.
 
They're not going to create a silicon Valley in Australia Rallying around a Fossil Fuel Burning Coal Plant. I could envision soot covered miscreants to the tune of mad max flocking to the black wafting pillars of smoke. I'm not saying it can't be a legitimate money maker, just that there's a pretty substantial gap between ripping through electricity and creating a new mecca of technological innovation.
 
There must be a way to harnass the frictional energy of a million people jacking off. Just imagine how many blockchains a blockchainer could blockchain.
 
There must be a way to harnass the frictional energy of a million people jacking off. Just imagine how many blockchains a blockchainer could blockchain.

I think that's a Rick and Morty episode.
 
150MW of capacity. 8 cents daytime, 5 cents night time rates. WOW. It'll be interesting to see if other power companies pick up on this trend. I'm betting that there's quite a few powerplants that have extra capacity that they'd love to sell on-site.
Imagine what the coal dust will do to the equipment... We thought there was a vidcard shortage now, what's happen when they all burn up?
 
Notice they aren't installing a power plant either. They're taking an already existing plant that was left for dead and just feed it coal. Coal is cheap, which we already know this. Most likely that coal plant was replaced with windmills, panels, or even nuclear. Though I doubt nuclear.

How many abandoned windmills or solar panels you see laying around for these guys to pick it up and start using it?
Watch West Texas... dem good ol' boys will be cutting them durn windmills down with chainsaws any day now...
 
Good for them. Who cares about future generations (of people and everything else)? This is a great example of the free market. Use a cheap source now, don't factor in environmental costs and make big money now...after all you can always use the money to buy air (a la The Sheep Look Up) and water and anything else. And, just like the Pharaohs, you can take all that wealth to the afterlife.

So will all these new mining farms be using ASICs or GPUs?
Who cares, as long as they make ME profits.
 
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Heh. All costs totaled up (transmission, generation, taxes and fees) we're at about 25c per KWH here in mass. You can't even qualify for time of use billing unless you have a very high minimum monthly usage. 3000kwh if I recall. I couldn't even use that if we got two electric cars...

It costs more in the winter than in the summer because we did the right thing, and transitioned away from coal, but the idiots didn't expand natural gas pipeline capacity to make up for it.

Power is expensive enough in the summer, but in the winter home hearing season natural gas shortages drive up power costs.

Every time someone tried to expand much needed pipeline capacity idiots go out and protest.

Fuckers even protested running power lines from Montreal in order to buy CLEAN HYDROPOWER.

I'm all for clean energy, but when we already pay many times more than other states for power, you have to be realistic about it.

I bet this is why almost no one has central air at home in New England, despite the fact that we get humid hot and sticky summers.
Watch out for those pesky gas lines... just ask this unfortunate family in Dallas, Texas about that:

raw.gif
 
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