A report revealed how integrating Bitcoin mining into solar storage systems can improve grid scalability and reliability.
Bitcoin Mining Properties Mean It Goes Well With Solar Power Systems
Solar systems present many challenges related to the nature of energy and the state of current storage technology. As solar power can fluctuate due to weather conditions and other reasons, storage is necessary to establish reliable production. However, large-scale storage can be very expensive.
This can make it difficult to adapt solar power to large systems without losing profitability at the same time. There is also the problem that the energy needs of an area can sometimes fluctuate wildly, so the plant can produce large amounts of excess energy that cannot be easily stored.
One solution may be bitcoin mining, as a report by Ark Invest suggests. A BTC miner, if integrated with a solar system, would simply be able to absorb any excess energy generated and produce BTC tokens which can then be sold to break even or even make a profit.
In this way, the excess energy produced would not be wasted. According to the report, a solar power system with a BTC miner can help supply more than 99% of end-user demand without losing profitability.
The table below shows how the battery size of a solar array can be scaled using BTC mining while the costs stay roughly the same:
The percent of end-user electricity demand that can be met with each size of the battery | Source: Ark's Big Ideas 2023
As shown in the graph above, without the use of Bitcoin mining, the battery size of the solar array can only be increased by a small amount before the levelized cost of electricity ( LCOE) also increases. The LCOE here is a measure of the average cost of energy production over the lifetime of the installation.
If a BTC miner is integrated into the system, however, the scalability improves significantly. From the graph, it is obvious that the solar battery size can be increased by 4.6 times in this configuration and the LCOE will still remain.
This facility can also reliably cover more than 99% of end-user demand. Compared to this, the non-BTC mining system would only have satisfied a maximum of 40% of demand, before profitability dropped.
The reason Bitcoin mining is suitable for this purpose lies in its several unique properties: modularity, flexibility, and mobility. Bitcoin mining farms are made up of hundreds of mining rigs, each operating independently of the others. This means that one of them can be disabled without affecting the rest.
These rigs can also be easily transported due to their small size and compact nature. And finally, if need be, the power input of these machines can also be increased or decreased in small increments. This means that no matter how much excess energy is produced, these machines can still absorb it easily.
BTC price
As of this writing, Bitcoin is trading around $23,900, up 3% in the past week.
Looks like BTC has seen some rise in the past day | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured image by Dmitry Demidko from Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Ark Invest
