Using Heat Pumps for Bitcoin Mining Benefits

So, in the UK, there's this government program to help with getting heat pumps installed at a discount. If someone set up an immersion cooling system for bitcoin mining, all that extra heat could actually be used to warm up a house. The info in the link mentions different types like air source and biomass, plus ground source with water and shared loops. Just wondering if anyone's thought about how to make this scheme work with an immersion setup? Has anyone tried this out? In the UK or anywhere else? Would love to hear your thoughts. But then again, if something goes wrong with one miner or the whole system, the house could end up cold while it's getting fixed...

If I was you I would not actually connect the miner to the loop of the heat pump. The reason is simple: You will mess with the system and the miner will just add another failing point to the loop. What you can however easily do is, simply leave the miner running in the house with air cooling or connect the miner to a single radiator in the house. My plan is to have the miner in the basement and connect it to one radiator in another room, like the living room, to have constant heating there. In general it should however be possible to connect the miner to the loop. What could be a problem is that the miner needs constant cooling. So what do you do if you dont need heating for some time? Shut of the miner? Because if you leave the loop running also will your heat pump run and you will loose electricity from it. The only solution would be a bypass for the heat pump, which will make it more complicated again.

The heat generated is pretty much directly related to the power used by the miner. That's why many people run a quiet miner in their room to heat it during winter. e.g. a A851 is about 9TH/s for 900W, no firmware or hardware modifications needed, and can set the fan to be very quiet. Just a single 3+kW miner will produce a lot of heat. Also note that immersion doesn't really change the amount of heat, just the amount of noise.

Your government probably has that program because heat pumps have an over-unity coefficient of performance - that is, they move more heat than corresponds to the wattage of electricity used - often by around 3 to 5 times. They're looking at net energy savings for heating versus directly burning gases or consuming electricity in resistive heat furnaces. A bitcoin miner is basically a resistive heat furnace and so is, rather than what they're trying to subsidize, more representative of what they're trying to replace.

Which will still not stop the OP in using a miner to subsidize his heating, if the energy is cheap enough. At least what I see, is that you will get the bonus just for installing the system. I see no rules why you should not be able to use a secondary heat source also. What people also have done is use their bitcoin miner to heat their pool. This can be done with a simple loop and a water-cooled bitcoin miner.

Which part? If it would have worked like that I could get a subsidy for using my computer to heat my room, hurry, I'm saving energy and the planet while I'm playing ARK.   The subsidies are for a more efficient system to be installed, an ASICs immersion system will generate just as much heat as cooling a normal space heater in that water, and you are still going to use electricity for powering up the miner, far more than a heat pump. And where is the energy saved, which is the aim of this program?

I did the (quick) math when the energy crisis started, and it's not worth it. The Bitcoin revenue isn't enough to make up for the more expensive energy. Either use gas, or a heat pump. It's only cost effective if you have very cheap electricity

Maybe you could use the miner as the heat pump's auxiliary heat source. Assuming you live a cold enough region where this is necessary.

Well, reminder of the obvious If you are using 1kW of power to heat your room with a heater - you have that 1kW cost for that power. If instead you are using an around 1kW miner heater, you may get some BTC to fund some of that power cost. So assuming the miner must pay the full bill or not be used, means you are missing out on the BTC return from that power bill cost.