alt Hacker NewsSo I don't have any context for this. The article says it uses as much power as 300,000 homes. Is that a little? Is that a lot? How much does one steel foundry use?
Edit: One steel foundry uses about 3,000 more than that, according to my napkin math
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You can multiply your own power bill by 300,000 if money is a more relatable unit.
I think a large steel foundry uses approximately 1/10 of the power of this facility.
Arc furnace foundry : 500 kw/tonne
Production : 150 t/hr
500*150 = 75 MW/h
To solve crypto sudokus I would say it's a lot.
3,000x would be 2.1 terawatts. That would require about 100 Three Gorges Dam, currently the largest generating station in the world, to power one foundry. Or about 2,100 nuclear power plants of typical size. I think your napkin math might be a bit off.
This was previously the location of an Alcoa aluminum smelter which used something around 1000+ MW. And that's why the crypto farm is there -- it already had sufficient electrical capacity to the site.
Folks should be happy since the crypto operation is using far less power and dumping less heat into the environment that the industrial operation that was previously there, but datacenters seem to be a trendy thing complain about at the moment so here we are.
Home energy usage is knocked down people that don't that don't do anything at home and where almost their energy use is externalized (at places that make the goods they use, or other places where they spend most of their their waking hours).
So it's a useful figure if you want to make a shocking headline. "Uses as much power as infinity of something that uses no power!"
Isn't "you can waste energy and heat up our planet and make live for everybody else harder just to make money for a few" enough?