Energy Currency

 People recently started investing in crypto currency around the world. The idea surrounds very complex tokens that are generated by complex algorithms. These tokens can be transmitted electronically and traced very easily. But what is the true value of something that essentially is a padlock. Not much unless we all agree on it's value.

But philosophy aside, what people started doing was buying high end PCs and higher end gaming graphics cards that could compute the algorithms much more quickly. The problem is the quicker people generated crypto currency, the more electricity these powerful computers consumed. Naturally then it became an optimization curve then to match energy consumption (in the area the computer was running) with crypto currency generated. Obviously it's a worthless endeavor if the costs of production are higher than the market value.

Then people started realizing they could use solar energy and battery banks to generate crypto currency. This brings us to our topic of this post. What if we skipped all the fancy crypto currency talk and removed it from the equation? What we have left is energy consumed and some sort of currency produced. Or what if the energy was the currency and it was just a matter of capturing it?

Now we're getting closer to a currency that really doesn't have a lot of transmission and transportation constraints because everybody has access to the sun and wind and it's just a matter of going to a person that has a surplus and is willing to sell some. And if you are somebody living in the middle of nowhere... chances are you don't consume more energy than you'd be able to produce from the wind and sun and storage.

OK so what is the value of one of these energy currency units you ask? Well maybe you didn't because I haven't set up the argument very well.

Consider that Lithium ion batteries are probably our most efficient way to store energy and the amount of energy that can be stored per weight of material is close to the theoretical limit. With current means of mass production we are just about at 1 kWh of battery capacity for $100. This battery will last let's say 2 years at daily 100% charge cycling. If charging this battery is free each time because of renewable resources, it means the cost of storage is the only expense which for a complete cycle computes to about 14 cents.

So what we could say is that the universal unit of energy currency is the kWh and 1 kWh is worth... let's round down to 10 cents (assuming batteries become a bit cheaper and last a little longer). To put that in perspective that is enough energy to turn 10 gallons of water 40 degrees hotter. Basically a dime would get you a hot shower if you had the water in a bucket.

The only flaw in this model is that unlike 10 cents, you really can't carry a kWh of energy in your pocket (you could carry it in backpack battery perhaps). But even if you could it wouldn't be worth toting it around. But maybe the middle ground is that you could reasonably carry around 100 Watts of solar panels, and if you were stationary and in the sun, it would passively generate a kWh of energy.

So the flaw in the energy currency model assumes a sedentary lifestyle and not nomadic.