This article feels a bit sloppy, but there are some cool details in it:
This means an ASIC operating at 3,000 watts produces virtually the exact same heat output as a 3,000-watt conventional space heater, but pays the owner for the privilege.
I've wondered about this. Apparently, an ASIC is about as efficient as a space heater at converting electricity to heat.
@Undisciplined was recently arguing in favor of widespread heatpunkery (#1442526) and this article makes me think he's not wrong:
Mining hardware manufacturer Canaan Inc. (@canaanio) is paving the way for enterprise-level heat reclamation with a 3 MW proof-of-concept in Manitoba, Canada, recovering ~90% of heat from 360 liquid-cooled servers to preheat water for a commercial greenhouse. Kent Halliburton (@khalliburton) of Sazmining is demonstrating similar scale with an Arctic Circle hydro-powered facility in Norway that replaces an oil-fired boiler for local community buildings. Christian Sartori at MARA (@MARA) and Colin Sullivan at MintGreen (@MintGreenHQ) are aggressively pursuing municipal district heating and commercial immersion, proving heat reclamation works from the retail-pleb to the industrial scale. Just to name a few.
At the consumer and prosumer level, builders like Dane Sjoden of Hashrate House (@hashratehouse) and Michael and Tom from Snorkel Hot Tubs (@SnorkelHotTubs) are delivering viral proofs-of-concept like the "Hashtub" (a hot tub heated by 200 TH/s of mining power - one of which will be prominently featured at this week's Heatpunk Summit). Toine (@TronMonGone) of 256 | HEAT inc. is developing turn-key retrofits to optimize bitcoin miners for space heating, and founders like Alex Busarov (@heatbit_com) are pushing product design so that hardware can sit quietly in a living room, resembling a high-end Dyson purifier.
There are some good points here about the larger heatpunk thesis:
As heating budgets "subsidize" electricity, the floor for profitable mining drops. A legacy facility might shut down when hashprice plummets, but a commercial greenhouse or a home heating system will never turn off their miners because the heat demand remains.
I won't be surprised if mining is never able to replace super high heat appliances, like ovens or stove tops.
There's a lot of room, though, for adoption of water heaters, space heaters, heated floors, saunas, hot tubs, etc.
This definitely caught my eye because of your comment about heatpunkery the other day. My wife is always running this little space heater. It'd be great if that was stacking sats.
Make it so.
I've got an Avalon Nano 3s that I move around like a space heater. Next winter I'm planning to finally get a HeatBit.
1 watt will always equal 3.41214 btu/hr. God wrote it in the laws of physics. It will always be a worse deal to not mine bitcoin with any heating needs supplied by electricity.
But yeah, with that gas stuff, you just have to be an irrational ideologue like myself.
I look forward to mining bitcoin while brewing my coffee
Yes!
It can't be used there, unless you design chips that are able to sustain 150-200ºC or something like that.
Right, that's the source of my skepticism but I don't know how feasible designing high-temp chips is.
If you want to talk about heat transfer you must necessarily talk about temperatures, and there's not any mention on that article.
The thing with heat is that it has a "quality" and the low T of the ASIC's makes it hardly usable in anything other than space heating in very cold places. As they mention the T diff. is the main point. You need at least 10 or 20ºC difference in order to transfer it something efficiently, so if you have heat at say 90ºC you can only heat something to 70ºC or so, but those are not industrial applications.
All it takes is for mining hardware efficiency to come up against hard physical limits. It's been a long journey from cpu to today's ASICs and I'm not sure if we're there yet
https://twiiit.com/ocean_mining/status/2027113131541934560
ASICs as paid space heaters. I’m here for it. The greenhouse and home setups make this idea way more interesting than just raw mining profits.