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September 18, 2017 11:34 AM   Subscribe

Wind energy used to mine cryptocurrency to fund climate research Taking the form of a 2m wind turbine with environmental sensors, weatherproof computer and 4G uplink, HARVEST ‘feeds’ from two primary symptoms of our changing climate: wind gusts and storms. It does this by transforming wind energy into the electricity required to meet the demanding task of mining cryptocurrency (here Zcash), a decentralised process where computers are financially rewarded for their work maintaining and verifying a public transaction ledger known as the blockchain. Rather than filling the digital wallet of the artist, all rewards earned by the HARVEST mining machine are paid out as donations to non-profit climate change research organisations such that they can better study this planetary-scale challenge.
posted by dhruva (15 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Yay, another opportunity to bemoan the perverse ingenuity that pushes every more energy into cryptocurrency mining! See also every time I've bought a GPU in the last three years.

Seriously though, couldn't they just sell the damn electricity?
posted by aspersioncast at 12:28 PM on September 18, 2017 [8 favorites]


Couldn't you just sell the power directly? I imagine that it might only make sense on a larger scale, but even as an art piece, I'm not sure why you need the cryptocurrency/Dunning-Krugerrands involved.
posted by sagc at 12:28 PM on September 18, 2017 [3 favorites]


aspersioncast and sagc, I had that very same thought, along with others about GPUs and ASICs and etc, and then part of me started cataloguing the infrastructure spending that would have to be done to sell the power, and then another smarter part of me thought "Why must we sell the power? Why don't governments or NGOs subsidize these units and make electricity something more of a collective right and responsibility much like voting?"

I had a look at the Dave Youssef essay linked from the original and now feel like I have to critique my unconscious biases alongside the piece itself.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:36 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ahh, zany Rube Goldbergesque contraptions that highlight the brokenness of other zany Rube Goldbergesque contraptions (like beyond-late-aren't-we capitalism's techno-gadgets of hyper-speculation) are fun!
posted by notyou at 12:39 PM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


That Dave Youssef piece makes good points that don't seem particularly present in the original work of art, sadly - and I'm not sure that engaging with cryptocurrencies is more... morally acceptable? than using the power grid.

The fact that the power grid is private doesn't seem to be solved by temporarily storing some value in ZCash - at best, that just pushes the problem down the line. Of course governments don't subsidize *these* - this is an inefficient art project. But there are certainly lots of subsidies available for renewable energy, just with a lot more focus on the practical use of that energy.
posted by sagc at 12:45 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


y'all it's an art project.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:17 PM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]


But don't let that get in the way of the metafilter metafiltering.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:18 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hot take: art projects are sometimes bad.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:55 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


and then part of me started cataloguing the infrastructure spending that would have to be done to sell the power

I would be pretty surprised if Sweden isn't set up for easy connection of small-scale wind energy generation, it looks like the network owner is obliged to connect, though this may not be cost-free to the generator. Sweden also has a quota mechanism in place for wind, which makes me slightly suspicious that the owners of this wind turbine might well be able to get renewable energy certificates and sell them on that market if they wanted to, giving a second source of income.

Where I live the local network is constrained (ie, there is too much stuff on it already) so even small-scale new wind generators have to agree to switch off their devices or disconnect them from the grid during very sunny periods (basically 9-5 in the summer) so they don't overwhelm the network when local PV is maxing output. In that situation then storage would make sense if it is cheap enough (currently marginal), but something like this might make more sense to make the generator viable, from the economic perspective.
posted by biffa at 4:07 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


y'all it's an art project

I also dislike Cristo and Jeane-Claude.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:10 PM on September 18, 2017 [2 favorites]




Couldn't you just sell the power directly? I imagine that it might only make sense on a larger scale, but even as an art piece, I'm not sure why you need the cryptocurrency/Dunning-Krugerrands involved.


A really cool version would combine a semblance of a household, with appliances in use that get first dibs on the use, with crytocurrency mining taking only the excess power.
posted by ocschwar at 6:12 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


There's a very simple question to ask about this - does this system produce more money than it costs to purchase?

Coz if not, then just take that money, give it to the climate researchers, and cut the bullshit.
posted by happyinmotion at 8:54 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]


The other potentially relevant use for this sort of system sort of links to ocschwar's point above. There is a growing expectation that we need smarter systems and that a key element of that will be dynamic pricing or 'time of use' tariffs. Basically these would help the system to manage demand to fit when lots of intermittent generation like wind and solar are available and try to incentivise reduced demand when they aren't available. They do this by offering lower prices when supply is low or demand is high. If your generator is available when demand (and thus price) is high then you use your own power if your wind turbine is working. If your wind turbine is working when demand is low and supply is high (so you will get a low price for selling) then the economics of generating currency might make more sense than selling the power directly.
posted by biffa at 12:58 AM on September 19, 2017


  does this system produce more money than it costs to purchase?

No. A 700 W wind turbine at ~ 2m height might average 70 W, likely lower. That's not going to run much of a rig.

(yes, I know this is an art piece. Next up, extracting moonbeams from cucumbers …)
posted by scruss at 6:49 AM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


For my next piece I stare directly into the sun as the most obvious way to absorb its energy straight into my body.
posted by aspersioncast at 12:42 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]


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