Bitcoin Mining Could Help UK’s Renewable Energy Grid
Bitcoin mining offers various benefits and potential use cases. In addition to maintaining network security and integrity, including the utilisation of GPUs to power machine learning, one UK-based Bitcoin advocacy organisation, Bitcoin Policy UK, is calling for its use to support sustainable energy grids and renewable energy generation.
A report from the organisation suggests that the bitcoin mining industry, a major user of electricity, could be crucial to ensuring that the intermittent supply of power from renewable energy grids is both “robust and viable.” The report says that mining is set to be one of the few technologies that offer a “completely elastic demand for spare renewable energy,” adding that it sets a “floor” price, monetising the supply of energy that would otherwise go unused or even “curtailed at a cost.”
It is arguing that it would need zero subsidies from the government as it uses all of the stranded or wasted energy available.
“Bitcoin mining is the perfect technology to solve the issues we face in the viability of our energy ambitions, and it currently has zero large-scale penetration in the UK market,” it said.
In Texas, bitcoin mining is already a flexible load, with miners providing an interruptible load that can be instantly shut off in response to grid demands, and repowered after the demand changes. The report said that this could sole the issue of the commercial viability of the UK’s energy security strategy, offering an assurance to renewable energy providers that there is demand for the energy they produce and that their projects will not go to waste.
