zlacker

I had a friend recently tell me about how his excess power is put back into the grid and how he hopes our area sees negative rates eventually like this.

My cynical side was quick to point out that I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day. After talking to him more I realized we both had different take aways from the story of "the tragedy of the commons" I lightened the conversation up by informing him he could do folding from home for a few hours to make sure his excess power went to a noble cause & thwart my zero sum approach.

>>rig666+(OP)
My aging mind can't remember the actual facts but it was determined that when someone has significantly more power than they had a need for (say, full batteries and a whole lot of solar) that it opened up interesting behaviors. We try hard to be as efficient as possible, but when you don't have to, it leads to interesting stuff. (like leave the lights on, leave the windows open with a space heater next to you, etc.)

>>rig666+(OP)
Is Folding a good use of computing resources and power? Do they have any wins?

>>rig666+(OP)
> I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day

I dunno, if electricity was free only for a few hours, I would use it to charge batteries, and then use that stored electricity later in the day when it's not free.

If electricity was free most or all of the time, and/or if I could store more than I could use, then sure, I'd probably use it for unnecessary things that some might consider wasteful (not crypto mining; I'm allergic).

>>Damogr+u1
Yes, mine is when I'm at a hotel I set the AC much cooler than I would at home, and I take really long showers.

>>Damogr+u1
Name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

>>Damogr+u1
I was told that in Russia nat gas is so cheap that they keep the heating on 24/7 and will often just open windows to regulate temperature. No idea how true this is and whether it just applies to offices / apartment complexes but this is what I was told.

>>rig666+(OP)
Is folding at home still relevant after alpha fold?

>>kelnos+N4
If the price swings were frequent and steep enough, you could probably have your batteries send power back to the grid when the price gets high.

I doubt the economics work, but I'd love to live in a world where a lot of the grid's battery storage is based on backup batteries people have at their houses with the added bonus of reducing their billing costs.

>>kypro+T9
District heating maybe

>>kypro+T9
My uncle in Moscow used to have his gas cooker on all the time in the kitchen.

>>kypro+T9
That's true. Proper ventilation with heat exchangers and all that is a very recent thing and not very widespread. Almost the entire housing stock, offices and other buildings were built without modern ventilation. Instead, buildings got windows with small separately openable sections (1/6 of the opening) known as fortochkas [1] for ventilation. They were a standard element of mass-built commieblocks [2] and it was common to overheat buildings so much that ventilation windows were left open all the time even in the winter. In modern times, when energy has a cost, they are often replaced with the latest well-insulated windows and kept shut to save money, which leads to molding issues due to insufficient ventilation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortochka

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchevka

>>kypro+T9
It's true! Old apartment buildings and offices were designed with district heating in mind.

The heating is provided via hot water radiators that are not at all adjustable, there are no thermostats in individual apartments! So if the weather is not very cold, your apartment can become too hot. While it's still sub-freezing outside.

Newer apartment buildings have adjustable radiators with thermostatic valves, but it's far from common.

>>jimbob+Ea
This is reality, att least in Sweden. You can invest in battery storage att your house and give control of it to the power company. They will then use the locally available power storage to either feed back to the grid or store excess of capacity and needed.

It can be quite profitable from what i heard, in relation to installing solar cells.

>>purew+dA
A utility offers (relatively) flat rates to domestic consumers, while purchasing some kilowatt-hours at higher or lower order of magnitude. When utility compensates a domestic consumer, its at the high order of magnitude.

>>stoper+t9
But in the case of the solar pwer generation and storage, the added use didn't have a negative effect...There's no penalty for using more, so they use more.