• HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
    3·
    5 hours ago

    You specified energy in your example, not me. And I hinted that a hookup fee would likely be dependent on the rated power capacity of the user.

    It is likely that a residential crypto miner would likely need to upgrade what they can draw from the grid.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
      1·
      1 hour ago

      They have 200A service, same as you. They don’t need to upgrade.

      The difference is that they are using 200A 24/7/365, while you probably average less than 10A, and rarely exceed 50A.

      They are literally using 20 times as much power as you, and you’re saying they should be paying the same fees as you.

      One such cryptoboy per block and the total consumption in the region doubles. The infrastructure costs double. Your “flat fee” doubles, because it is divided evenly among the users, rather than assigned to the cryptoboys who created it.

      And you’re saying this is a good thing?

      I feel like I’ve entered the fucking twilight zone here.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        No one is saying you should pay the same total bill as they do, just the same connection fee if you and crypto boy have the same hookup.

        You’d pay $10 for a connection fee and $1 for power while they’d pay $10 for a connection fee and $1000 for power.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
          1·
          39 minutes ago

          Understood.

          And that “$10 connection fee” makes perfect sense for covering per-user administrative costs. The cost is the same to send a $1 bill or a $1000 bill to the customer; a per-user fee to cover that administrative fee is not unreasonable.

          But they aren’t talking about administration. They are talking about infrastructure maintenance. Infrastructure is a shared resource, and the maintenance costs scale (primarily) with total consumption, not per-user.

          From the original comment:

          Hence, the split that many utility companies are shifting to. There’s a fixed charge to have a connection to the grid, which covers the cost of grid maintenance. And there’s a separate cost per kWh of energy used.

          That “fixed cost to have a connection to the grid” does not cover grid maintenance. Grid maintenance costs are proportional to consumption, not number-of-users. It does not make sense that this fee should be divided among users rather than based on consumption.