Texas bitcoin miners halt operations to save energy in the midst of the heatwave
Bitcoin miners in Texas have stopped operations and responded to the call to save energy and spare Lone Star States’ fragile power grids as demand has increased during an intense heat wave.
Industrial-scale crypto-mining companies, such as Riot Blockchain, Argo Blockchain and Core Scientific, use millions of computers to extract bitcoin in an energy-intensive process that environmentalists say exacerbates climate change.
According to Bloomberg, these companies, which were attracted to Texas due to lower energy costs and friendly regulatory environment, have made the state a hub for crypto mining.
But with the three-digit mercury in the entire region, the companies have complied with a request from the state power plant, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, to save energy to avoid power outages.
ERCOT issued a statement Sunday night warning residents that they are facing a “potential shortage of reserve capacity without any available market solution.”
“The heat wave that has swept over Texas and large parts of the central United States is driving increased electricity use,” ERCOT said in a press release.
“While solar energy generally reaches almost full production capacity, wind production currently generates significantly less than what it historically generated during this time period.”
So far, power outages have been reported this week in Concho County, where 1,000 customers were without power. A total of 23,000 customers reported that they did not have electricity.
Businesses and residents of the county, located about 250 miles west of Dallas, were asked to voluntarily cut back on energy use between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Monday.
In recent days, mercury reached 107 degrees in San Antonio, 106 degrees in Austin, 111 degrees at College Station and 110 degrees in the border town of Laredo.
“There are over 1,000 megawatts of Bitcoin mining load that responded to ERCOT’s conservation request by shutting down their machines to save energy for the grid.” Lee Bratcher, president of the Texas Blockchain Council, told Bloomberg.
“This represents almost all industrial-scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows over 1% of total network capacity to be pushed back online for retail and commercial use.”
Crypto-miners use sophisticated computers to solve complex mathematical problems. The miners who are the first to solve the problems are assigned the next block of bitcoins.
But the mining process known as “proof of work” – where miners compete against each other to crack the code of an algorithm using powerful computers – is more energy-intensive than the alternative, “proof of effort.”
“Proof of stake” mining means that miners promise to set up a “stake” of digital coins before they can validate transactions.
“Proof of stake” mining means that miners promise to set up a “stake” of digital coins before they can validate transactions.
Some governments have cracked down on mining after their energy networks were unable to sustain the stress caused by the process.
The halt in mining activity comes at a dangerous time for the cryptocurrency industry.
The shares of companies engaged in bitcoin mining have fallen 75% this year as crypto sees record low values.
Bitcoin fell below $ 20,000 this week – far from the all-time high of more than $ 64,000 back in November.
