How will breakthroughs in renewable energy affect Bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin mining is a heavy topic around the world. Not only because the ever-increasing difficulty makes existing mining hardware quickly obsolete, but also because of the sheer energy consumption. Due to the high cost of electricity and the low price of Bitcoin, many miners and companies are looking for areas where energy prices are relatively low. But if we can use existing wind power hardware to generate electricity, would mining become more profitable?

Energy options for Bitcoin mining

The cost of electricity is quite high in most parts of the world. The average price per kilowatt is between $0.06 and $0.35, so it is almost impossible to mine Bitcoin at home, let alone make money. And the difficulty of Bitcoin mining is constantly increasing, and existing hardware must be very advanced to gain a competitive advantage.

As a result, most companies have moved to places with more favorable energy conditions, such as Iceland, where green energy solutions are available. Bitmain, which developed its own Antminer hardware, can buy electricity in bulk for its own data centers and deploy its own hardware to gain a competitive advantage.

No matter how you look at it, renewable energy seems to be a path that Bitcoin mining must take. Because it can not only reduce energy consumption through traditional means, but also stimulate innovation in the field of new energy. As things stand, wind energy hardware may become the first target to be selected.

Researchers have been looking for ways to not only make wind energy hardware more affordable, but also to make it more efficient. To do this, they conduct numerous tests and simulations to run turbines, see how they interact with the grid, and how they affect each other.

Making wind energy hardware more efficient

Renewable energy comes in many forms, and wind energy is one of the most interesting experiments so far. However, there are still quite a few problems to be solved in this area, such as how to position the turbines in the right direction of the wind. In short: wind farms are not currently operating at optimal performance, and further research is needed to bring renewable energy to the next level.

“We found that by modeling more accurately we could reduce the amount of power coming out of the first turbine, allowing the others to produce more power,” said Kanan Tingham of GE Bangalore. “That means by putting a bunch of turbines together, we could see a 1% increase in annual production at a wind farm.”

But that's not all, GE is also trying to use wind energy hardware to store energy. Similar to the working mode of solar panels, the extra power will be saved in "batteries" and can be used when weather conditions are not good. However, more testing is needed to determine whether this can become a viable solution.

Impact on Bitcoin mining?

Many mining companies have not yet considered renewable energy, but for those that have, wind power is not necessarily a priority. The only exception is Iceland, where the country's entire power grid runs on geothermal renewable energy.

All in all, wind turbines have not yet been ranked as a significant source of renewable energy for Bitcoin mining. However, if GE succeeds in creating some kind of “battery” to store extra power, that could very well change in the coming years. Electricity seems to be slowly becoming obsolete, so alternative solutions are more urgent than ever.

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