Quote:
Originally Posted by Xist
Linus Tech Tips had a video about mining instead of running your heater.
Is it as effective as electric heaters? They say those are 100% effective, yet natural gas is supposed to be much cheaper.
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sorry if this ends up here twice, I never saw it post so trying again
So with the bitcoin mining basically the heat is waste energy from the work of mining so I'm essentially increasing the computers efficiency by harnessing the waste energy from the pc. That's why I don't mine outside of the winter months cause then I'd be spending electricity to remove the waste heat making it double wasteful. They certainly don't produce as much heat as a space heater cause not all of the energy is going towards heat. However you run them non-stop 24 hours a day so over time one gaming PC can warm an entire room, given slower than a space heater. Space heater is like flooring the pedal to get up to speed and a miner is like slowly accelerating to a certain point. Now different GPU's will generate more heat than others depending on how efficient they are for mining. My RX580 (which has dedicated gaming or mining modes) was making more than the other two cards combined however it also generated the least amount of heat. Depending on the size of a room and how much heat each GPU makes you'll need 1-2 GPU's per room. Maybe more for a large living room. I only ran 3 and it worked pretty good if I shut the spare bedroom door and let that room just be cold. My house is about 730sqft. It would be a hefty upfront investment to get started so I'm glad I just had some good enough GPU's sitting around to test it out this winter. I'll have to look into Linus's video about it.
I will say I did push it a bit further than some people dealing with the house being 65 degrees for a few weeks before I finally kicked my heat on and just playing VR sword fighting anytime I got cold so I'd stay warm lol
Space heaters are considered 100% efficient cause electrical waste is heat so using it for heat just make the losses also heat for your house. By that perspective I am sure I was getting close to 100% efficiency with the miners since I added multiple functions for them to serve.
Technology connections did a good video on space heaters (I'd post links but I can't on this site yet) name of the video is Space Heater Nonsense
However the amount of heat you get for the amount of energy you put in with a space heater is less than a heat pump as you mentioned technology connections has a bunch of videos on it
Instead of using the electricity to create heat the pump just transfers the heat from one place to another. It's efficiency though depends on the temperature differences but it can in a lot of cases heat your home more for less power since it's not creating the heat but syphoning it from somewhere else.
In my opinion bitcoin mining is even better cause A if your GPU is good enough you are earning more than you are spending in electricity and then B you can recycle waste heat to further increase it's efficiency. I was only making like $3-$2 a day profit but I saved a lot on my heat bill. However I didn't sell that bitcoin so I'm probably down a lot now with the current crash but I'll just hold it till it goes back up.
I hope by next winter we will have rebounded from the shortage and I can actually get some modern GPU's since all of mine are 5+ years old.
Now for the summer months I am trying Technology Connections cold battery idea again I can't post links but name of the video is (Batteries aren't the only way to store energy. Here's another.)
His idea is get the house really cold while electricity is cheap so it takes longer for the house to heat up. Making your home into a cold battery. I took it a step further by opening all my windows at night while it's in the 60's and setting up fans to circulate the air. I have a smart thermostat too so it tells me how much my AC runs and what time of day and one day this week I got the hotter half of my house down to 68 degrees (only half the house has windows that open, my house is a Frankenstein like my car and half the house was built decades before the other) from windows being down and my AC only had to run for 4 mins that day while it was 84 outside and my insulation sucks with my old ass house. However I checked my local power rates and found that my rate basically doubles from 2pm-6pm so I set my thermostat schedule to turn the AC up to 84 during those hours but luckily it doesn't actually heat up to that temp during that period so it's just like turning the thermostat off but still having it going just in case cause I'd never want it to go higher than that.