Straight, No Chaser
Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy
Straight, No Chaser
Dirk Roeder - From 21 Wonders To Energy Freedom: On Travel, Grids, And Human Prosperity
What does freedom look like when it’s not a slogan but a daily practice? For Dirk Roeder, it starts with owning his time—and he stress‑tests that idea by circling the globe with his wife, mapping an eight‑month route through 21 wonders across four categories. The stories are vivid and honest: planning around seasons, securing the rare Machu Picchu slot, and discovering that people are kinder than headlines suggest. El Salvador’s transformation becomes a standout moment, not as a hot take but as a lived encounter with safer streets and proud citizens.
From there we switch gears to the engine beneath modern life: energy. Dirk unpacks why there is no such thing as a rich, low‑energy country. Everything that lifts living standards—food systems, clean water, lighting, healthcare, logistics, and now AI—rides on abundant, reliable electricity. He explains how real grids work in plain language: frequency must hold, forecasts miss, weather swings, and operators use 15‑minute auctions and real‑time dispatch to keep supply and demand in balance. Spinning turbines provide crucial inertia; sometimes generators are paid to curtail or factories are paid to pause, all in service of stability.
We also explore a surprising ally for reliability: Bitcoin mining as a flexible load. When solar overproduces at midday, miners can absorb surplus power and turn it into revenue, then power down at peak demand to free capacity for homes and industry. Call it digital monetary photosynthesis—the conversion of stranded electrons into economic value. This is the market doing what it does best: rewarding responsiveness, aligning incentives, and enabling more renewables without sacrificing resilience. The broader message is clear: prosperity grows when we scale clean, affordable, dependable energy and let free markets test ideas, iterate, and win on merit.
If you care about travel that widens your view, energy that expands human freedom, and practical ways to keep the lights on while cutting emissions, you’ll feel at home here. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who geeks out on grids or globe‑trotting, and leave a review with your top insight—we’d love to hear what surprised you most.
https://21hemoon.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@21hemoon
Links:
www.bitcoinforbusiness.io
X: @gavingre
X: @BTC_4_Biz
Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net
NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta
Welcome to the show, everybody. This is the Straight Note Chaser Podcast, where we talk about human freedom through money, technology, economics, and philosophy. So, what exactly does freedom mean? Well, today's guest, Dirk Roda, says freedom to him means mastery of his own time. Dirk and his wife have lived this philosophy out in an eight-month journey that took them all the way around the world, visiting many of the wonders of the world. Dirk is also involved in the energy sector. Energy is a technology, and energy is massively important as far as human freedom goes. If we have abundant energy, we can do almost anything. We can grow as much food as we need, we can generate clean water, provide lights, we can provide internet, we can provide all these technologies that have improved human life through the ages. We can give this to everybody. This was such a great conversation because we get to speak about traveling the world, freedom of time, and the potential of energy and how that can free humanity. It's a great chance.
SPEAKER_00:Hopefully, I can meet the expectations you just uh put up for the audience.
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm sure it's going to be a good one. Dirk, uh, I mean, uh this show that I do is you know focused on uh human freedom. Uh we look at money, technology, economics, and philosophy as sort of four pillars uh that I believe can play massive roles in in human freedom. Um and uh in the conversation leading up to today, uh you sent me a link um uh to the moon. Uh it was a YouTube channel link. Uh I had no idea what it was, but I clicked on it and I was absolutely blown away. Um it was uh I I think you sent me almost like the highlights reel, probably eight to ten minutes or something, maybe not more than that. Um just describing what to the moon is. Uh and I thought that was such a perfect introduction to this conversation because uh my show is all about freedom, and I think nothing really describes freedom uh in uh a better way than just that five or six minute video clip that you sent through to me. Um so talk about to the moon. Just tell me about this idea. Um and what does freedom mean to you as a person and how do you live out freedom? What is the practical freedom to you?
SPEAKER_00:Well, the the I think the pillar of freedom on a personal level is that you are the master of your time. Once you have achieved this, basically um there's nothing else uh to do like besides living a healthy life. Um the project to the moon or 21 He Moon is basically it's it's a game with numbers and with letters. To the moon, I guess, is the ultimate goal if you want to travel, or now since we have Elon Musk, I think Mars is the ultimate travel destination. But um, because to the moon is also a meme in the Bitcoin space, so I mix it up with the 21 number, which is uh resonates with us, meaning my wife and myself, on a very personal level. And 21 also is the limited supply of Bitcoin. So if you read the 2 as a as a 2TO and then the 1 as a T, and then you know it makes sense to have like to the moon. And basically, um, we founded this YouTube channel because we decided to travel the world. Uh, it was a dream from both of us, and to have this kind of freedom and to see how other people around the globe live, how their culture is, of course, how their food tastes and smells, and just to have the freedom not to uh you know fire up your laptop and reply to some emails or do whatever work you're doing, just to have the freedom to plan ahead completely without anyone interfering besides the two of us, what we will decide to do tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. And this is how this project came together. And um the the last hint to the 21 is uh it was actually born out of a conversation. We had roughly, I think it was autumn winter time in 2023, and we had a walk and we were talking about world wonders, and we would start counting them, like you know, like oh what do you know? What do I know? And we came up with nine, and we figured okay, that can't be right because it's seven. So everyone knows there are seven wonders of the world. So I sat down and Googled it, and I found out that there are actually four categories of each seven wonders, like the natural wonders, the ancient wonders, the new wonders, and the modern wonders. And then we said, okay, we have seen randomly four, then we set up an itinerary to close and see and visit 21 wonders of the world in total, and this gave us a route around the world, and we started on the 17th of September in 2024 and came back in May 2025.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, I mean, that is uh that is incredible. I mean, uh, I think you said eight months of travel. Um how far ahead did you did you plan? Did you have a master plan where you kind of figured out more or less the order to do things and then almost plan it in small increments, or did you just only plan short increments? Uh how did you do this?
SPEAKER_00:That is a good question. Um, I think as I said, the wonders basically gave us the route. We had to decide which one we travel first, and of course, this was done by the seasons and the weather and and all that stuff. And then once we had the route, uh we considered to buy one of those around the world tickets, but we um did a little calculation at the end of the day. I think it was the right decision, so we did not buy into around the world ticket because um when you are bound to one of those big airline corporations, uh you you cannot use the local ones, and usually the local ones are cheaper and it gives you much more flexibility. So basically, we had a rough idea how many weeks we will spend in each place or in each country, and um only Machu Picchu in Peru gave or mandated us to agree to a certain date because it is very well booked and uh it's very difficult to get tickets spontaneously. You have to line up, like sometimes people line up for two, three days in the row, depending on the season, of course, and it's it's a lucky draw, and we didn't want that. So um, this was basically the only fixed um appointment we have on the whole itinerary, everything um other than that we we planned ahead like one or two weeks, or sometimes spontaneously a day ahead. So, for example, has like it's just a personal story, but uh I have relatives in Canada and we were in Mexico, and there was some sort of a family emergency, and we decided spontaneously to hit on hit a plane and fly to Vancouver um over a long weekend to uh see the family. So this gave us since freedom is your main topic on the podcast, this gave us the freedom to be very spontaneous.
SPEAKER_01:So I I uh you need to tell me um the difference between the Twitter headline of the country that you're going to uh versus the reality of being in the country. Uh, and what I mean by that is you know, newspaper headlines, social media headlines. Um, what was your experience in terms of what you had heard and then what you had uh what it was like when you were on the ground?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let me summer uh give you a short summary uh up in advance. Um we traveled 26 countries, 96,662 kilometers. We tracked this with an app called Polar Steps, maybe accurate by a kilometer or two. Um and we haven't run into a single problem. So we have not run into a single problem, and I can say that humans are kind. Um the world is, I know that sounds crazy to some ears, but the world is in its best place it's ever been, especially when it comes to mankind, be it like access to water, to education, etc. etc. And um for me it was my first time on the South American continent. I've never been. My wife has uh studied there for three months in Colombia, and I was a little, do you say, I had prejudiced against South America. I think most of the people, you know, heard the stories here and there. And um, I have to say that you know, we we didn't have any problems. Of course, we took care, we didn't go in any dark alleys. Um, and uh we asked, of course, I I remember we've been to Colombia actually, Bogota, and our host from the hostel, she told us that the area is not a safe area, so we should be back by seven or latest eight o'clock, because the area is is is gang, is a little gang-related, and we shouldn't be out on the streets. So, of course, we've followed those advices. Um, but other than that, um I think there were uh a lot of surprises. Um the smiling faces in El Salvador, many people know that El Salvador is one of the or was the murder capital of the world, and this has changed over the last four years. And to to look in those faces, like everyone we met is celebrating the political leader, uh, the changes they made to the to the government, and well, I think uh first uh foremost to the society, that they got rid of all the gangs and all the violence and the murder. And I think they had like I you know, don't quote me on the numbers, but I think they had one or two homicides in a in a in a year, so like coming from the murder capital of the world to basically the actually safest country in the Western Hemisphere, that's quite an achievement. So this was a big surprise. Um we had bad surprises as well, but I don't want to you know uh uh spoil them because then people you know people like to talk about bad stuff, but uh overall it was such a marvelous and unique experience. Um, what else? Um I we we've in it, I think it's not surprising. We've been to Bolivia, which is a very poor South American country. We've been to Peru, which is slightly a little better economical-wise, but it's it's funny, you know, the people who have nothing are the ones who give you the most, be it on a personal level, experience or warmth or uh smiles, but even you know, give stuff away, they are very helpful. I'm not saying that's just because they are poor, but you know, the prejudice or what you hear in Twitter headlines, um, when you when you're actually there, you you can see that um that the that the people, as I said, humans are kind. Um yeah, and one surprise, and this is a little a political one, since I I talked to South African, maybe you can relate. I don't want to uh uh tick off boxes or or um make you angry, but uh when I traveled through South America, um we got in contact with a lot of people, we talked to Uber drivers, we talked to restaurant owners, to our hosters and stuff. And all of them openly said that their government is corrupt, that the government is promising changes, and the the only change that all the time uh that happens all the time basically is that they have other pockets of their friends and relatives to fill, and it never trickles down to the actual population. That is a very sad story, and that is why I think the story of El Salvador is such a beacon of hope, and as our former foreign minister says, a bacon of hope. Sorry, I gotta make this, I gotta have to make this joke. Um so uh yeah, I think that this is a it's a prime example how good leadership can actually positively influence uh the safety, the security, and the freedom of the people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, you spot on. Um I th I think pretty much everything you said uh I can agree with, and that's been my experience as well. Um I suppose you know South Africa has been through a bit of a regime change. It was well known uh the previous sort of uh apartheid governments and then the 94 elections and the first democratic elections and all of that. Um a friend of mine actually once did um no revolutionary party has ever gone on to successfully rule the country. And um I hadn't heard that expression before, and then I sort of thought about it and try to think of every sort of uh so-called revolution I could think of, and it seemed to sort of hold true. Um so yeah, I think that's where South Africa finds itself at the moment. And uh it was obvious to some people uh many years ago already that uh tough times were coming, but I think it's now become obvious to everybody that uh we're in a we're in deep chat, basically, and uh we need to do something about it. So um we have uh we have some elections coming up, and hopefully we will uh we'll be able to get some changes and maybe head more in El Salvador's direction than in uh uh a worse direction.
SPEAKER_00:Fingers crossed, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. Um so Dirk, the reason I actually uh and uh uh the reason we actually ended up speaking uh when we did meet in Stellenbosch um was uh about energy. Um so uh you you work for a uh uh a company, a large company in Europe, uh in Germany specifically, and um you're involved in the energy space. Now as I mentioned, you know, this show is about human freedom, and one of the sort of four things I like to talk about is how technology contributes towards human freedom. Um energy is a massive technology. Um and that is really what I wanted to talk to you about. Uh you know, it energy seems to, in our modern world, almost control pretty much everything that we do. Uh, whether it's the vehicles we drive, uh the homes we live in, uh, how we get things across oceans or um through airlines flying uh cargo around the world. Uh agriculture relies on energy, you know, even just pumping water into irrigation channels. Um people are growing things in hostile climates that they might need greenhouses or something similar, and they might need heating and cooling and uh hydration, uh, irrigation, all of that. Um so you know if energy, if energy as a freedom technology was abundant, we could probably produce more food than we could eat. Uh we could probably get water to everywhere that we need it, whether we desalinate. I know that's quite an energy-intensive process and expensive. Um but it seems like we could impact probably almost every area of life from simple lights into places that don't have lighting, electricity, and soon after lights and electricity, you get uh internet access, Wi-Fi information comes through. So uh you know, energy is such an important thing for freedom. Um South Africa uh with the previous uh dispensation prior the 94 elections uh had one of the cheapest electric electrical costs in the world. Um and we had one of the best grids, we were exporting energy to all of the neighboring states. Um by 2008, we could no longer supply electricity to ourselves, and we started having these rolling, uh they call it load shedding. Um I think Americans or Europeans might call it brownouts or something like that. Um so you know, I've had some first hand experience in what uh limitation on energy can do to a country and to an economy, and to this day we're still struggling with that. And that was in 2008. We're now nearly 20 years later, and we still haven't solved the problem. Um anyway, sorry, I'm I I'm putting out a whole one page there, but my question to you is um what does energy as a freedom technology mean to you?
SPEAKER_00:Um well, I think first I would like to state that there is no such thing as a low-energy rich country. It simply does not exist. And um energy, uh, we need abundant, cheap, reliable, and hopefully um uh well uh less CO2 emission energy. I think this is the goal. Because imagine everything actually, yeah, anything we consume basically needs energy to be produced, be it the potato you you cook, be it the iPhone you use to WhatsApp. I know WhatsApp is a big thing thing in South Africa, um, or Telegram or whatever you use. Um, the car you drive, the the house you heat, um, whatever. So uh yeah, and then just think about what is around the corner. I am I remember uh I saw a statistic, uh, Sam Altman from OpenAI. I don't know if many people or of your audience might know him. He is one of the founders of of ChatGPT, basically. He made an announcement in a uh, I think it was an investor call or something, a couple of weeks ago, and he announced that um they are planning to ramp up their energy consumption, their energy need for their IT infrastructure from now two gigawatts to 250 gigawatt. To give you a rough idea what that actually would mean, that would mean that uh by their trajectory they um they said uh this is by 2035, so that's 10 years down the road from 2 to 250, and they had a trajectory, and that would mean that by 2030, only one company, one AI company, ChatGPT, would consume more energy than the whole country of Germany. So if you put this into perspective, what AI might do and might help us, uh be it the Terminator version, which no one hopes comes true, or the version that you know robots will help us. Um AI will support us in our everyday needs, but um they need energy to run those things, to run those algorithms. And if you look at this statistic, and it's just one company, may they maybe they are off by 50%. Even then, imagine one company consume as much as 50% of you know the big the the third biggest economy in the world, that's Germany right now. Uh, that is crazy. So, yes, energy means freedom, energy means um uh how do you say like prosperous, prosperous society? Hopefully that makes sense. Um, and anyone who is on this path, or anyone who's telling people we need to save energy, we need to reduce energy, is is um against humans. This is um I I'm just saying this from the bottom of my heart, and it's um this is evil. If we go down this path, if we roll back what we have achieved, this means dark times, this means uh um lesser health care, uh lower life expectancies, uh etc. etc. Just like from the health perspective, this is insane. So we need to make sure that as I said, the that we need that we have cheap, abundant energy, which is hopefully reliable and is uh has low CO2 emissions.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I think that's such an important point you raised there, because um in the world we live in, there is this talk of constantly trying to reduce energy consumption. Um but uh if you look at it from uh you know free market uh principles, uh if there is a demand, a high demand for some resource, then uh most many companies and individuals uh get into that business uh to try and solve that problem because uh there is uh value to add, money to be made, uh there is a uh product that they can sell. So uh by having uh uh an art uh like energy that is uh it's finite, we don't have infinite energy, but we have a lot of use for it. So if we can get more companies interested in trying to find how do we get better, cheaper, faster ways of getting energy, uh that by itself brings down uh the cost of energy because now more people are using it, and we found more efficient ways to produce it. Um do you agree with that? Um as opposed to trying to reduce the use and thereby um save save the planet or whatever you however you want to phrase it?
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, I just I just want to to make that point that I I do care about the environment, I don't want to pollute any lakes or the ocean or you know, uh want to I just uh keep on going uh emitting CO2 on the levels we are doing it uh right now or how we have done it in the past. That's not my point, but there are solutions. Um, but I think the since I come from Germany and uh I guess we have a reputation when it comes to energy policy, which is in our eyes, it's we are leading the world, but uh I think if you look from outside uh to the inside, everyone is laughing about us. So we showcase basically what it means to go down this green path of reducing energy and making energy expensive. And um, this is um the case right now. We have uh and this is induced by politics and by decisions, um, politicians, and at the end, the voters have done, um, which means that our energy prices are well, we are thinking in the top three of uh the energy prices in the world, and uh so competition is really hard for us or for the industry in Germany. So they are moving away, the heavy industry is moving away. And if you look, if you look at it from a rational point of view, if you really care about the environment, what do companies do if they cannot afford the high cost, high cost-intensive energy prices in Germany? We are regulated, so you know you as a company you have to obey some rules that you don't spill the the rivers, etc. etc. So the companies say, okay, energy is too expensive, so we move away. So most because they know they cannot stay in Europe, so they move away far away, and that means they go to countries which have absolutely no regulation. So we we yes, for Germany as a little country in Europe, uh, we may have a positive impact on our CO2 emissions, but since the climate is all over the world, now the company moved to a place where they can emit whatever they want because the government doesn't care. The government is just happy that you know, like a big corporate, international corporate, comes, builds a factory, and uh and hires some people. So um the the environment on a global level has got uh is basically it's it's a it's a negative, but for Germany it's a positive. And those people who usually think everything through from uh cradle to crack, all of a sudden just pick something in the middle and don't care about the left and the right. And this is like this is for me, it's beyond me. Um, and I I think we we need to have an open market. We have to get rid of any politician who sits in his chair, and I'm not saying that all of them are bad and that by all means that all of them are stupid, that's not the problem, but they they sit in some chairs and they follow some programs of their party, or even worse, an ideology, and they push things through. Um, but uh this is a bureaucrat deciding whether this technology will win over the other technology. And if you look at human history, especially the last hundred years, all the inventions, if the free market decides, I think there are some tiny examples where the the free market decided the wrong product. But most of the time the people decide whether they want to buy this new car from Mercedes or whether they say no, I don't buy it. It's it looks ugly. I'm not saying Mercedes is ugly, I'm just saying as as a for the sake of the argument. Um, and then the market you know doesn't touch the product. And then the company has to evolve and has to make it better. So my my um uh how do you say I I'm preaching basically free markets, which suits the title of your show. It's freedom, because I think the if if you have free markets, this also means free creativity, people can think freely and come up with maybe in the first place some crazy ideas, but who knows, you know. Then VCs, like the guys with the big pockets, they put in some money and they invest in it, and maybe they invest in a hundred country uh companies, and 95 of them go belly up, but five of them, or even if one of the 100 invents, I don't know, the energy source of the future, then all the money spent was worth it. But it was people who spent their own money and not politicians who are spending the taxpayers' money based on decisions basically um written for him by the party leader leaders or by the ideology they are following. And I think this is where we have to get uh and and uh no, this is how we should decide things and not just with energy. I think this is how we should decide about everything. Like if you if you like a product, you you buy it. If you if you or you go to a restaurant, just simple as that. You go to a restaurant, you have a bad experience. Will you go there again? No, you will stay away. You may may even write a bad Google review, but if you have a blast, you will come back, and that's how business works. And then the business knows okay, my sushi is great, or my pizza is is is is uh is it's lecker, I guess you say lecker here. Um so uh yeah, I think this is what we should do, but uh I have doubts that we uh can enlighten anyone who is in charge, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've heard it described that um failure in the marketplace is not really failure. I I mean, sure, uh someone comes up with an idea, they try and sell it, it doesn't work, but that failure informs the next generation or the next iteration of that same idea or product. And people can say, well, so that guy tried it, it didn't really work, how can we change it? So failure is uh is as important as the success. You won't get to that high level of success without all the failures leading the way. Um so it's uh it is, I agree with you completely. It's so important to people for people to be free to try an idea, put it out into the marketplace, put their own money into it, uh, try and make this thing, try and sell it, and if they can't sell it, well, uh they've now learned how to improve it or move on. Um I mean it's basic free market uh economics. But coming to practical things now, um Dirk, uh you know, most of us walk into our house in the evening, we switch the hit the light switch on the wall, the light comes on, you push the power button on the TV, the TV comes on, you press the coffee button on your coffee machine, and the coffee comes out. Um we live with all these appliances, but I don't know how many of us really understand what is involved from an engineering point of view, so that the power is there when you flick that switch. Can you just talk a little bit in simple terms about how grids work um and how this all comes together? So you have lights at home at night and a warm cup of coffee when you get there.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, I just want to say that uh I became interested in energy. I wouldn't call myself an energy expert, but I came became interested in the energy grid because of my job. I'm into Bitcoin mining and um we run pilots in Europe or slash Germany, where we want to stabilize the energy grid with a highly flexible demand, which is uh Bitcoin mining. I explain what that means, hopefully now in simple terms. And I guess this was uh one of the conversations we briefly had when we sat in the pizza place in Stellenbusch. So the basic principle of any electric crit in the world, doesn't matter if it's South Africa or Europe or whatever, is basically that the generation of electricity has to match the consumption. It must always be in exact balance. Um, I think you guys here are on the 50 hertz as well. Um, and this is basically um the the frequency um which the uh the the crit operator decided on. Um physicists have found out that all the devices like transformers and even uh devices we use, machinery, is um this is one of the idle frequencies where they have a long shell life. I know this sounds crazy, but this is really an old story. So uh I the United States runs on 60 Hertz, it's slightly a bit different, but uh at the bottom line is you have to always match energy production with energy consumption, and this is physics, and this is something especially politicians here and there do not understand or maybe ignore. I don't know what's worse, but um uh you cannot argue with physics, and I like to um quote the most successful entrepreneur of our times, Elon Musk. Physics is the law, anything else is just a recommendation, and he nailed that one, that is so absolutely true, and this accounts for the energy grid. So, what does it basically mean? Um, so you like the energy grid is is is a highly complicated endeavor, and uh if you start you know go down the rabbit hole, if I may say so, and you you read stuff, you find out that this is this is the life source of our society. That means the life source for South Africa as well as for Europe or anywhere else on the clock on the global uh market. Just imagine. I I know you guys have experiences with load shedding, but just imagine a load shedding not would be like I know you haven't have haven't had sorry uh load sheddings, which I I'm really happy for you guys, but uh just imagine load shedding would last a couple of days, what that means to your personal life, and what that means for society. So I I don't want to do stay scenarios, but uh just coming back. So this is an absolute crucial part of running a modern society. You have to ensure that the energy grid is stable. That also means if you have more and more demand, a rising demand, be it you have a rising living standard, or now I think I made the expi uh uh example with AI, you know down the road there will be more demand because we will have these IT farms full of Nvidia chips, GPUs doing all those calculations and algorithms which you know basically prompt um uh the answer to your question, you ask ChatGPT, then you have to plan accordingly. And if you look at this simple mathematical um formula, you already know that saving energy is anti-human. Because what that actually means is if we want to live in a modern society and we know down the road that AI will consume unbelievable amounts of kilowatts, then to say we need to save, so does it mean we need to go back to horses because we have to, you know, we have we cannot consume over a certain threshold. So now we we we decrease our consumption because AI is around the corner, so that we can use AI, we need to ride on horses. I'm I I know I'm painting rough pictures, but just you know, to get everyone uh alerted to what that actually means. And um so every country has so-called grid operators, and their only duty is to guarantee that those 50 Hertz, this balance is always met. And um in Germany they they they um I I've written this down, they are called transmission system operator, and they have a they have a task, and it's only one task keep the crit alive whatever it takes. So this is not a company who's running for profit, this is a company which or uh yeah, it's it's some sort of a company, and their only objective, their only mission is keep the crit stable, and yeah, they uh and that is that is what they do on a daily base, um, and basically make sure that you switch on the light and the light comes on.
SPEAKER_01:So uh Dirk, how do they do that? How do they make sure that they match demand and supply? Um, I mean, in your example, you're talking about sorry, um, AR, which consumes massive amounts of electricity, and we're going to and we're using it more and more. So exponential perhaps growth in electricity consumption there. But uh, on the other end of the scale, even just population growth, uh cities expanding, uh, you know, new shops opening up, houses are being built. Um, even if we do nothing, we are going to still need more electricity because there's gonna be more people and more people need to be fed and so on and so forth. So we have to be building uh uh more capacity all the time. So how do you balance that the demand and the supply? I understand what you say, it must be balanced. Well, how is that practically achieved?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, uh, so you you want to go really deep. Um good. So very simply. Uh deep but simple. Okay, I I I try. As I said, I'm not an expert, but I just I I got accustomed uh to it uh or I got interested in it due to my job, and it's very fascinating uh to learn something which is so crucial to my daily life, to like all the conveniences I have. As you said, you know, you go to the fridge and then you have an ice cold beer. Haha. Okay, but okay, uh, so coming to your question. Um, in I can only now this is how um basically the European European crit works. I I think that this is handled very, very similar to what I'm about to say. Like the as I said, the physics don't change because we are in South Africa or we because we are in Peru. Physics is all over the world. Um, but I give you an example. This might be a little different in in South Africa, but the the general uh gist of it is the same. So we have increments of 15 minutes, and it's called there are many, many price auctions going on. Um, so that uh the so-called crit operators they ask the big consumers, those most mostly are AIs of the world, the uh the chemical plants, the uh the car manufacturers, whatever, you know, the industry. And um they can plan ahead. They know the assembly line will consume such and such an amount. We have a thousand workers working on laptops. If they come into the to the office at nine o'clock, they switch on the laptops, then consumption goes up, blah blah blah. So this is all leveled, it's like a huge Excel sheet. Hopefully, it's not run on Excel. I I doubt it's run on Excel, but just give you an idea. And um then in Europe, by the way, it's the biggest connected electric crit in the world. I didn't know that before as well. So, because all of Europe, from the southern tip of Spain to the northern tip of Norway, this is thousands of kilometers, um uh this is uh everything is connected, and um, so the crit operators locally in Germany, they are dispatching the energy with the crit operator in Poland and in Austria and Switzerland and Sweden and Denmark, and then the France guys are dispatching with the Spanish guys. So this is like one giant operation, and what they do is they have increments of 15 minutes and they have a so-called day-ahead curve. They say, Okay, tomorrow, 12 o'clock, what is the demand for the energy and what is the supply for the energy? And then they try to match, and then the free market, sort of free market, finds a price. So if you have a higher demand for energy and you have not enough supply, the price goes up. If push comes to shove and they really need to um that the market is not able to uh to navigate through, then they have to ask that either the demand is depending on what's the problem, either the demand has to be lower, so they talk to the industry that you know they they give them uh basically benefits if they say, okay, we will reduce our demand, so that in this 15 minutes from 12 o'clock to 1215, sorry, that in these 15 minutes we will have this balance of supply and production, uh, sorry, supply and demand, or the other way around, um, if they have excess energy, they will talk to the uh power plants. Most of them are solar and wind because they can be shut down immediately to shut down the added energy production because we have excess energy and we don't need it. And uh this is is basically how they plan ahead. 24 hours ahead, they plan those increments, and then of course, they have the real-time stuff, and this is where it gets really crazy because if uh if you um highly dependent on renewables, you are highly dependent on nature, and all we all know the weather forecast for tomorrow is many many times of in the year is totally wrong. So they say it's gonna be a sunny day, blue skies, and all of a sudden it rains. You know, for us it's a nuisance. Oh, okay, I can't go to the beach, blah blah blah. But for the energy grid, this is a freaking nightmare because all of a sudden you don't have the solar, you calculated one day before, and then they need to redispatch, and this is when the prices go crazy. And as I said, so they either ask the demanding part to lower the demands, or they look if they can get more energy somewhere else, and this is what in the European grid is happening basically on a 15-minute basis. So uh they're moving energy around through all those countries, and um in on a second base, like second meaning uh time-wise seconds. Um now it's getting really uh complicated. Um, it's called inertia. Um, this is the spinning masses in turbines in gas power plants, nuclear power plants, and coal power plants. So, I guess everyone knows roughly how a an um ice engine, like a gas engine from a car works. You have like moving parts there going up and down, and then you have this explosion, and it goes down and goes up again, and that's how your car basically moves forward. And this movement, this spinning mass, this can be controlled very, very in a sensitive way that you have like the the little discrepan discrepancies. Sorry, sometimes my English is not perfect, the discrepancy between demand and supply, this will be leveled by this so-called inertia. And uh yeah, this I can't go any deeper because I I don't know like uh like the details myself, but like from an understanding level, I hopefully could give you an idea how the they level the grid, and so it is basically very important to have this spinning mass for these particular reasons because you can on a on a very, very, very short term, you can break the spinning mass a little bit so you can get this rebalancing on this um matching production and demand, and it and they do this with a spinning mass. This is like the little the little things, how they basically adjust it. And the big things is that they you know ask people who demand too much energy, okay, you have to lower your demand in three hours because we can't match it, and then they make a deal, they pay the company that they say, okay, we lower down, so they get actually being paid by the grid operator, uh, so they lower the demand, or they say to a power plant, okay, you have to shut down, we have too much energy. Then they pay the power plant. So the power plant gets money for not producing. But as I said, the only objective from a grid operator is to stabilize the grid. Hopefully, that was kind of understandable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, um, it was very nicely put. So um uh how does Bitcoin mining fit in to help with grid stabilization? I think that was something you mentioned at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, as I said, um, this is a demand. First of all, um, of course, Bitcoin mining always comes last, meaning um, if you want to switch on your your light at night or you want to make a coffee in the morning, your demand for energy always has the right of way for Bitcoin mining. Having said this, I guess this already explains why Bitcoin mining is so interesting, because you can adjust those miners. I'm not saying that they can um, how do you say, uh, replace the the spinning mass. That's not my point, but they are some kind of a spinning mass. They are not on this, like in one second, they cannot um they cannot adjust in in a second, but they can adjust in a couple of seconds to demand requests in either way. So you can lower down, you can say the machines run on 100%, and then the request comes, oh, we have we have we have not enough energy. So uh a Bitcoin mining farm could easily say, okay, uh not a problem, we will lower our demand, we will run the computers on 80%. Uh, and by that the 20% gives you a breathing um or or or a gap, or it gives you, gives you maybe the the the to fill the gap you need to stabilize the grid. And basically, this is what Bitcoin mining does. Bitcoin mining is able to breathe as a as usually an energy demand, it breathes with the um the requirements from the grid operator, and by that the uh bitcoin mining is a perfect way to stabilize the grid. And the more and I gotta say this, um, the more renewable energies usually are in the grid, the more extreme the rebalancing uh becomes because you have more and more unreliable, and I say unreliable because of the weather. I'm not saying that solar doesn't work, but you have more unreliable energy sources, and if you if you run an assembly line, you cannot breathe with clouds which are going in front of the sun all of a sudden the solar energy capacity drops, and then you cannot say, okay, now we are going by 60% with our assembly line. That's simply not possible. That's not how industrial production works. I know that some people in our government, like the Green Party, that they think that is how production works, but uh they have never they they've never actually worked in a production line and they've certainly never had the responsibility um to run a business, so they don't know. So, in their theoretical approach, this also always can work, but they don't know that you know if you shut down certain processes that it takes days to relaunch them, like think chemical plants and stuff like this, or you you are in a in a steel production, you cannot just shut down like a one of those big ovens where you melt the metal, you know. Like it's it's crazy to think you can shut this, you can shut down this oven and you just fire it up in 15 minutes. Think about the temperatures you need to melt metal. So having said all of this, basically the stress increases in the net the more um renewables you have. And this is basically perfect for Bitcoin mining because Bitcoin mining comes in and can say can say, okay, the peak hours, like over midday, when stay with solar because it's very easy, between 11 and 2 o'clock, you have the peak. So this is the highest production of solar energy. Usually, that is the time where energy in Germany is not needed, so you have a peak of energy production nobody is asking for. And this is where Bitcoin mining is a solution to say, okay, we will take this energy, we will fire up the miners, and we will transform. It's called we call it or we named it digital monetary photosynthesis. So basically, we transform energy into money. So we fire up the mining farms, we would then take the peak hours of solar energy and store the energy in money so we can buy back energy at nighttime when it is expensive and the solar panels don't work, and then we have to you know ask France for their nuclear energy, and then France usually says, Okay, we sell you the money, we sell you the energy for a premium, then you would have Bitcoin as a sort of um leverage to say, okay, not a problem. We mine some bitcoins in midday, now we pay the premium overnight. It's not that simple, but just to give you an idea how Bitcoin mining fits into this because it is a highly flexible demand.
SPEAKER_01:It's such an amazing example of almost like a free market, you know. As you said, it's uh it's a system you can't cheat it. There's a demand, there's a supply, those change somewhere they have to be met. They don't just get met by magic. Somebody has to do something. Someone either has to do more of something or less of something to meet it. So it's it's really fascinating uh to hear that. Um, Dirk, we we're basically up on time at the moment. Um, I've probably got about 10 more questions that I want to ask you, but I will certainly uh schedule up uh round two, maybe round three and round four going forward. Um uh but yeah, uh any closing comments from your side? Uh if people want to get in touch with you or just follow um uh to the moon uh your to the moon project or or anything else, uh where can they get hold of you?
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh first of all, I think the if you if you like travel and uh you like to see nice places, and maybe you can you can stick up with my voice and uh my opinions and what I'm going to say about this or that country. Um I think down the road I will share some insights on South Africa, because I I'm South Africa right now, I'm in Eisna at the moment. Um, then I guess YouTube uh is a a very good uh source, um, but it's basically all about adventure travel and sports. So uh uh here and there that you know when we go to a Bitcoin community, I might make a video about it, but uh neither Bitcoin nor energy is any topic in this YouTube channel. Um yeah, people I can if if people really want to, but it's the same content. I have a I have an X account, but it's basically the same content with travel and adventure. So basically, um if people want to contact me or have questions, I think uh they can either leave a comment in YouTube or they can send me a private message on Twitter or on X, um, and then I can can help them.
SPEAKER_01:And what is your Twitter handle?
SPEAKER_00:Basically the same like my YouTube handle. It's like the 21 He Moon.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, perfect. Um Dirk, thank you so much. Uh this has been a great conversation. I've been so excited to have this one. Um so thank you for your time. Uh I wish you the best with the stay in South Africa. Uh, how long are you still here in the country for?
SPEAKER_00:Uh I think I can say this at this moment. So we do a test uh lifestyle test drive at the moment. So we consider to move here part-time. And I will be here with my wife until mid of December.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, excellent. Well, I might just hit you up uh at towards the end of December and see if you uh have made a decision yet as to whether you will be spending some time here. And I'd love to hear your thoughts uh on the country once you have uh finished your time. Uh but thank you so much. It's been amazing chatting to you and uh have a great rest of your day.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much for inviting me. And again, hopefully I could I was able to give some interesting insights to you and your audience.
SPEAKER_01:It's especially relevant to South Africa, where we are experiencing energy uh issues, and I think uh for many people this would be the first time they've actually been told how it works and why it's such a difficult problem to solve. So thank you for that. Have a great day, Dirk. Keep well. Bye-bye.