zlacker

> 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).

>>kelnos+(OP)
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.

>>jimbob+R5
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+qv
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.