This guy gets it
https://crypto.news/rethinking-energy-storage-with-bitcoin-mining-opinion/
Discussion
A bit weird that the EIA as well as the article state battery capacity numbers in "GW". Are they just omitting the "h" in "GWh" here?
> When we look at the total battery storage capacity in the United States, it’s evident that the increase in production and utilization is happening at an exponential rate, with 30 GW expected to be reached in capacity by the end of this year and a staggering 970 GW estimated to be reached by 2030, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
The chase for sites with frequent negative electricity prices is on. In theory Germany should be a pretty good candidate with quite regular pv peaks at noon in the summer.
The policy/regulatory side of things may well be a show stopper though. Let's see how well the "Greens" do in the coming elections.
I’m a little confused about the potential for “synergy” between storage and miners. To me, it seems like they are both addressing the same grid stabilization opportunity, but don’t really compliment each other. Do u envision them working together at the same site? Or just organically working towards grid stabilization via price signals?
Yes they can absolutely work together. When electricity prices are high, use battery. When it’s low, power up batteries for four hour discharge to mine bitcoin. The rest of the time mine bitcoin directly. More arbitrage options with batteries + bitcoin together. And because batteries have a limited storage and discharge capacity,
If you’re a renewable energy generator you have three options - use to sell to grid when prices high. Use for battery and bitcoin mining when prices are low.
Got it. So the value for is that bess+mining enables slightly more hours of the year for miners to be hashing (during the 4hour discharge periods when prices are high and miners would normally be curtailed, but can use Bess power).
Assuming the Bess arbitrage is viable on half the days of the year (potentially aggressive in my experience) this could improve miner revenue by ~10% annually, which is meaningful.
I’m wondering in how many markets this is viable in. The BESS business case can be slightly helped by miner kickbacks based on this additional uptime, but largely needs to stand in its own.
Are you thinking of these opps as generally FTM or BTM?