The power deviations which have been affecting electric frequencies have experienced the weird knock-on effect of clocks that calculate their time dependent on the frequency of the power system. Because of this, these are running at “a delay of close to six minutes”. It’s unclear exactly how this downturn manifests itself, over what period, and also whether these clocks can be manually adjusted to show the correct time. What is apparent is that the power drain accountable for this anomaly is enormous: 113 GWh, which is equal to the power consumption of Greenland for six months. Central heating timers and oven clocks are among the systems affected.
This enormous belt of 25 countries, running from Spain to Turkey and out of Poland to the Netherlands, has been subject to “a continuous system frequency deviation by the mean value of 50 Hz” accounts the European Network of Transmission System Operators to Electricity (ENTSO-E). The positioning of the disturbance has been identified — Kosovo and Serbia — however, the cause hasn’t.
The wonder of what might be siphoning off electricity on this grand scale stays stagnant. It might be a top secret project involving a particle accelerator akin to the Large Hadron Collider. It might be government impropriety or incompetence. Or it might be crypto miners. Suspicions are decreasing on the latter alternative. Electricity prices in Serbia and Kosovo are among Europe’s cheapest, with all the purchase price of mining a single bitcoin in these regions estimated to become $3,133, placing them on a par with China. “The first step [to solving the issues] is to cease the deviation,” writes ENTSO-E. “The second step is to compensate for the missing amount of energy.” Crypto miners could nevertheless be exonerated of all charges. But until the culprit can be identified, an massive Allied mining procedure remains a strong potential.
Do you believe crypto miners could be responsible for the power drain, or are they a convenient scapegoat? Let us know in the comments section below.
From multiplying the surroundings to making it more difficult to search for extraterrestrial life, cryptocurrency mining has been blamed for a large number of sins. But to cause time to slow down is a brand new cost and one which, on the surface, seems hopeless. Something strange is happening in Central Europe right now: clocks are running slow, rather than by fractions of a second, but entire minutes. Could large scale crypto mining be liable or is it made a convenient scapegoat?
Overclocked Miners Might Be Slowing the Clocks
see: New Study Looks at the Cost to Mine BTC Round the Globe
Mining
The Search for a Culprit Intensifies
Published at Fri, 09 Mar 2018 05:59:43 +0000
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Images courtesy of Shutterstock, and Korean Grid.
ENTSO-E is obviously unhappy about the missing power and its strange side effects. In reality it is seething, but is helpless to act. The situation, it acknowledges, is largely a political one that will require the collaboration of those countries suspected of causing the enormous power drain. On the Swiss Grid website, the present deviation from 50 Hz can be viewed in real time. In the time of publication it was sitting at 49.970 Hz, causing a grid time deviation of 345 seconds. The website explains: “There continue to be many clocks which go with the frequency at the power grid. If the frequency is significantly higher, they move quicker. If the frequency is reduced, they move more slowly.”
Europe’s Clocks Are Running Slow and Crypto Mining Is Becoming Blamed - April 2024
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