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Using Bitcoin mining to reduce your power bill?

Energy is expensive and some forms of it are even contributing to warming the planet.

With this in mind, we should always be aware that it's a good idea to use as little energy as we can when it comes to transportation, heating, industry, household appliances and the like.

I for one know that during the winter months, my monthly electricity bill increases horrifically, as I rely on a heater in my office to stave off the chilly temperatures of the small hours.

However, I've also been as smart as I can in terms of multi-purposing my energy consumption.

For example, I tend to use my 3D printer a lot more in winter because it is also a pretty good heater.

The bed (the flat surface on which the prints are based) is often raised to a temperature of 55 degrees or more, so as to avoid the print warping as the filament cools after being laid down. Given that this bed is about 350mm in diameter and is black, a fair amount of that heat ends up being radiated and convected into the room in which it is placed.

There's also a power supply in the printer that generates a reasonable amount of heat. That heat is wafted away by a small fan and further contributes to warming the room.

In fact, when I'm doing a lot of 3D printing I often don't need to use my little fan heater at all on the warmer winter days.

That's a great way to repurpose the energy being consumed by my printer.

The same goes for CPU/GPU-intensive tasks on my computers. Once you hear the fans ramp up you know that the winter chills will be dispersed as a side-effect of that work.

Of course come summer and everything is reversed.

If I want to do some 3D printing on a warm summer's day then I'm in trouble. My tiny office will easily crac 30 degrees, even with windows and doors open. That's why I had no option but to buy a small portable AC unit that I used on such occasions.

One small mitigation is to only print stuff in the small-hours of the morning during summer, when the ambient temperature has dropped.

It seems that I'm not the only person who likes to take advantage of waste heat for winter warming purposes and I found this piece rather interesting.

Let's face it, if you're going to use electricity as a source of energy for heating, why not offset the cost by doing a little Bitcoin mining while you're at it?

Energy consumption is the big enemy of Bitcoin mining and for someone just running a small mining system it's simply not economically viable to try and make money this way, given the high cost of electricity.

If you have excess solar capacity that can be used to run your mining hardware then that's fine but most people don't -- especially in the cooler/darker months. Dual-purposing mining with heating however, that's a stroke of genius that could make a small but meaningful dent in those winter power bills.

Carpe Diem folks!

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