Overall, Bitcoin mining cost residents and businesses in upstate New York about $250 million a year in higher annual electricity bills, a 2021 University of California Berkeley study concluded. Two counties in Washington state took similar steps.
After power prices surged, Plattsburgh temporarily banned crypto mining in 2018 until it could pass measures to regulate the industry. But the city of Plattsburgh, New York, may provide clues. It’s too early to estimate how much Texans’ power bills could rise as a result of Bitcoin mining. New types of demand come with a number of risks and challenges, and “Ercot will continue to coordinate and collaborate with its regulators and stakeholders to successfully integrate crypto loads,” the grid operator said in an emailed statement. So far, Ercot hasn’t publicly disclosed what it's done, but its members will vote this month on creating a task force to understand how many mines will connect to the grid and how fast. It falls to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, to evaluate how Bitcoin mining will affect the power system. Texas utilities may have to figure it out largely on their own, weighing the cost of upgrades against long-term benefits like revenue that can be invested in protecting against outages. “These are just challenges we’ve never faced before,” Naylor said in an interview. Besides threatening to boost power bills, the dozens of Bitcoin mines proposed are also a risk to the state’s shaky power grid after a deep freeze last year left hundreds dead and pushed up prices so much that utilities were left with massive debts or bankrupted. and Argo Blockchain Plc flock to Texas, spurred by almost nonexistent regulation, relatively cheap electricity and Governor Greg Abbott’s quest to make the state the global center for crypto mining. Rayburn’s talks with Bitcoin miners illustrate the conundrum utilities face as crypto companies like Riot Blockchain Inc. Utilities like Rayburn have to provide service to miners if it’s technically feasible to do so, but upgrades to the grid threaten to drive up bills for consumers already shouldering price shocks for almost everything. Each would consume enough electricity to power as many as 60,000 Texas homes. Two of the mines would each require as much as $20 million to fortify power lines and avert blackouts. He’s received multiple proposals to build Bitcoin mines, with rows of electricity-guzzling computers that solve mathematical problems to create digital coins, on what’s now ranch land. Naylor has had to get up to speed quickly. “I was writing it down, B-i-t-c-o-i-n,” said Naylor, chief executive officer of Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative Inc., which provides power to about 229,000 customers - mostly small towns and homes - north and east of Dallas. (TNS) - David Naylor’s knowledge of cryptocurrency was limited, to say the least, when Bitcoin miners started approaching him last year about buying power from the utility he runs across a 16-county stretch of rural Texas.
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