- Gridless, backed by Jack Dorsey’s Block, operates bitcoin mines in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia.
- The company’s bitcoin mine in Kenya, near an extinct volcano, has powered 5,000 households in the country.
- “As often happens, you’ll have an overage of power during the day or even at night, and there’s nobody to soak that power up,” Gridless CEO Erik Hersman told CNBC.
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76 sats \ 4 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 21 Apr
This Bitcoin use case, harnessing stranded energy sources far from the grid, enabling for the first time the build out of electrical capacity in situ, really gives me hope for the future of humanity. Connecting these sources to the grid is typically the single most expensive aspect of on-boarding new sustainable energy sources. This creates a chicken and egg paradox: Cheap energy with no grid and no customers = no investment = untapped cheap energy source. If only there were a customer that could buy and use energy right at the site...
Now we have that anchor customer for every cheap energy source. Bitcoin rigs can scale right along with increasing and maximizing the energy output of these locations thereby deferring indefinitely the expensive connection to the grid. If the hashrate covers costs (and cheap energy implies it will), this changes the game entirely. It bootstraps cheap energy sources everywhere. Bitcoin not only serves as sound money, it enables sound energy.
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40 sats \ 2 replies \ @KenyaCoin 21 Apr
If there was the demand, in the Great Rift Valley, which cuts through Kenya, there is over 10,000 GW of continuous geothermal electric generation potential that remains untapped.
All of Kenyan demand for power combined though has not yet exceeded 2,000 GW of consumption at any one point in time.
So building additional geothermal generation capacity is hampered by the demand for additional capacity in which the energy produced would be in demand, 24x7.
If an additional geothermal plant was constructed and came online today, the only time of day where there is unmet demand is in the evening, (e.g., 6pm - 9pm), when the sun goes down on the country's solar generation plants but the demand for power remains high thanks to televisions, lights, etc. So what happens is they hold off on constructing of that very expensive geothermal generation plant until they have demand for its power 24 x 7.
Bitcoin mining can subsidize the early days of a new plant, where bitcoin mining is a paying customer for the remaining 21 hours per day, albeit at a significantly lower cost per kWh than what the consumers pay.
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 21 Apr
Yes, this supports the thesis that Bitcoin serves as a great anchor customer for tapping undeveloped energy sources with variable demand. Bitcoin becomes a valuable addition to consider when investing in such conditions.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin 21 Apr
Geez, ... typo, of course.
Should have read:
10,000 MW (10 GW)
and
2,000 MW (2 GW)
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiracDelta 21 Apr
Cute meme, but AI/HPC does that too
It's funny how you view "the grid" as this unchanging monolith, ignoring the fact that it is downstream of fiat government and central planning 🤦♂️
Also, mining itself is nowhere close to putting... nvmd, don't have time to explain it
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @KLT 21 Apr
Love sharing these types of positive articles.
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 21 Apr
Gases type of innovations and solutions are next level. Hats off to the team.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @Satosora 21 Apr
I feel like a lot of these places are in more undeveloped countries.
Its not like it can easily happen in the USA.
Do we have any big btc mining companies here?
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @RdioActiv 21 Apr
There's no reason it can't happen here as well.
The west is spending an enormous amount of money developing inefficient energy storage systems that'll never scale up.
Instead we should be over producing with renewables & Nuclear, using Bitcoin miners to soak up the excess. Far cheaper and easier to attach to the grid.
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11 sats \ 1 reply \ @nym 21 Apr
I love these and hydro power mining solutions.
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17 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 21 Apr
I also love the fact that these stories make it to mainstream media. It counters all the mining electricity fud.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin 21 Apr
All bitcoin mining operations, including this one in Kenya, consume power. How does something that consumes power then power households?
The problem is that while Ms. Sigalos produced a great video, some editor at CNBC totally misunderstood what was said in the video.
The company previously has said that they have a mining op that helped to subsidize a mini-hydro generation plant, and that generation plant serves 5,000 households.
So technically, that might be electricity delivered to a previously unserved area, thanks to Gridless's subsidy (thanks to bitcoin mining of the unused capacity), but that isn't a Gridless bitcoin mine itself "powering" any households.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KenyaCoin 21 Apr
Here's the video from the article OP shared, but in a standalone article:
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/04/19/jack-dorsey-backed-start-up-taps-into-geothermal-hydro-and-solar-power-to-run-bitcoin-mines-across-africa.html
Or the same video, sans advertisements, on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/KenzieSigalos/status/1781728688645493239
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