Solar ‘Bazooka’ Bitcoin mine warms warehouse amid Europe’s energy crisis

cointelegraph.com:

It’s another win for Bitcoin miners and the environment. A Dutch Bitcoiner has installed a Bitcoin (BTC) miner in a warehouse to replace the heating system powered by natural gas. 

Why? Because it’s cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and uses solar power.

Our latest installation heats a warehouse with electricity instead of natural gas. We’ve installed manual valves to guide airflow. The sound has been attenuated under 40db with a large damper. The people that work in the warehouse enjoy the warm temperature and low sound. pic.twitter.com/fcdEUlqiuN

Bert de Groot is the founder of Bitcoin Brabant, a Dutch company that helps “businesses adopt the Bitcoin standard.” He’s always on the lookout for untapped energy sources, and ways in which Bitcoin mining can improve business efficiencies while saving money and the planet.

At a greenhouse this year, for example, Bert installed Bitcoin miners to maintain the perfect temperature for flowers to bloom while reducing reliance on polluting natural gas. So naturally, when Bert learned that a warehouse owner had 50-megawatt hours (MW/h) of electricity going spare while their natural gas heating bill went through the roof, he sensed an opportunity for Bitcoin mining.

Bert told Cointelegraph that the warehouse (whose owner prefers anonymity) had a 50 MW surplus of electricity from a solar panel installation on the roof. That’s “quite a lot,” he joked.

The roof panels power warehouse operations but the company burns natural gas to warm the warehouse. Worse still, despite having a surplus of energy that could be sold to the grid, grid controllers in the Netherlands do not reward contributing spare capacity — even if it’s solar energy. Bert continued:

Bert installed one Bitmain Antminer