One of the largest bitcoin mining operations in the world, Genesis Mining, has been working on an experiment with Systemair, Lulea Technical University, Research Institute of Sweden, and the local Boden municipality. The teams in Sweden are developing a system that converts excess heat from Genesis’s bitcoin mining to power greenhouse operations.
Bitcoin mining is extremely competitive and the network consumes a lot of electricity to secure transactions and mint new coins. For instance, the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) shows that the Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate consumes an estimated 12.54GW and an annualized consumption level of around 88.14TWh. Out of 20 mining pools, there’s a whopping 150 exahash per second (EH/s) pointed at the BTC chain.
This week, Genesis Mining, revealed a new innovative project the firm is working on with a few teams. Genesis has been working in Boden, Sweden, a large region located around the coastal city Lulea with four groups. Systemair, the local Boden municipality, Lulea Technical University, and the Research Institute of Sweden in a partnership with Genesis have been developing a system that converts excess mining heat into greenhouse power. The pilot aims to recycle excess energy from bitcoin mining into sustainable heat sources.
According to the participants, the pilot plans to address supporting Sweden’s objective toward self-sufficient food production. The study is being promoted by Genesis Mining’s philanthropic arm dubbed “Hashpower For Science.” Mattias Vesterlund, Senior Researcher at RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) explained how the project can achieve self-sufficient production models.
“A 1 MW datacenter would have the ability to strengthen the local self-sufficiency up to 8% with products that are competitive on the market,” Vesterlund detailed. Genesis Mining’s custom-built crypto mining storage containers will be located adjacent to the greenhouse. The container is tethered to the greenhouse by leveraging a custom-built air duct system that carries the miner’s excess heat.
Marco Streng the cofounder and CEO of Genesis Mining said that decentralized applications will transform the world, “but all those benefits can’t come at the cost of the environment.” “Genesis Mining has always preferred locations that offered 100% renewable energy sources, that’s why we’ve focused so much on the Nordics,” Streng detailed. But as the industry leader, we view it as our moral and ethical responsibility to push the industry forward, and finding a way to convert our excess energy has been a major priority.”
Streng further added:
We look forward to scaling this project and bringing it to not only more of our own datacenters — but to others as well.
A Senior Lecturer from Lulea Technical University, Andreas Johansson, has been making calculations based on the project’s design and Sweden’s cold climate.
“For the cold climate in the north of Sweden, our calculations show that a 300 m2 greenhouse can easily be heated with a 550 kW container, even with outdoor temperatures reaching almost -30℃,” the lecturer said. But the potential is much bigger than that. The temperature difference over the greenhouse is in this calculation only 10 degrees since we assume a DC output temp of 35℃ and a GH temp of 25℃. If the DC output is increased to 55℃, then the GH area can be tripled to 900 m2.”
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Genesis and the teams in Sweden are not the only people who have thought of leveraging excess heat from bitcoin miners. Two years ago a French firm named Qarnot released a home heater called the “Crypto-Heater or QC-1” that heats a room in your home while the user mines crypto assets.
Some people have devised ways to utilize excess mining heat to do certain things like heat up a garage or distill alcoholic beverages. Ethereum miners have been used to heat homes and a few Russian babushkas not only mined BTC in the province of Siberia but also used the miners for heat. Bitcoin miners have utilized excess mining heat to grow tomatoes.
Genesis Mining and members of the project also hosted a webinar about developing the hybrid bitcoin mining greenhouse system. News.Bitcoin.com readers can check out the video of the webinar below.
What do you think about Genesis Mining working in Sweden to develop a greenhouse powered by excess bitcoin mining heat? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
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