You achieve similar results by simply charging such customers current market rates. Nobody is going to be mining Bitcoin while paying 2.50$/kWh.
That’s the objection, it’s simply a waste of money.
That’s the objection, it’s simply a waste of money.
So why are they paying bitcoin miners to turn off, rather than just charging them market rates at all times and letting them decide for themselves?
I feel like I'm missing something here.
The UK system: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/industry-information/balanci...
It seems you'd be eligible for "quick reserve" if you could turn on or off >1MW of response within one minute. Ideal for batteries. Includes a "standby" fee paid hourly to cover having the system "armed".
(It seems unlikely that either the bitcoin operation or their electricity meter could manage sub-minute response times to changes in prices alone? I'm not exactly sure how metering and payment works at grid level and how granular it is)
This is a pretty common scam among neoliberals that I don't know how it's still a mystery to people. "Dur freedum markets good!" or whatever populist lies to get elected then crank up subsidies to your friends. A tale as old as time.
Right up there with "defund state institutions and then point to their dilapidated state as evidence of their inherent failure". Nhs in the uk for an easy example.
Consider the payment as the cost of maintaining demand during periods where you don’t want it.
It's like a factory that can only produce 100 widgets each week, nothing more or less. Ideally you want to always sell 100 widgets each week (supply = demand). You could build a smaller factor that only makes 60 widgets, but the cost per widget would be 50% higher and at market rates you can't make enough money to justify the investment.
So what you do is build the 100 widget factory and you sign up a customer who will always buy 40 widgets each week, and the remaining 60 widgets you sell to smaller customers.
If suddenly the demand from smaller customers hits 90 widgets one week, you don't want to just cut off the 40 widget customer and say "tough shit", because they may not come back and you're stuck with 40 widgets each week you can't sell.
So you pay them money in exchange for accepting a lower supply of widgets that week.
Even with the payments, net-net you’re better off because during the 50 weeks per year when smaller customers only buy 60 widgets, overall your set up is more efficient.
Demand and price are linked. If you’re selling 40 units a week at 10$ and demand increase to 90 units @ 10$ that doesn’t force you to sell at 10$, you can spike prices to 50$ and suddenly people aren’t trying to buy 90 units.
Electrify customers pay a premium to have a fixed rate. Customers swap to market rates because they can save a little money on average and significantly more if they delay use to cheaper periods. Such as plugging in an EV when you get home but only charging it from 12pm to 4am or whatever.
Establishing a separate mechanism to compensate "virtual" generation (via load reduction) works no matter what pricing structure I use for my typical energy purchases.