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United States Bitcoin Power

Bitcoin Miner Purchases 112-Megawatt Texas Wind Farm, Takes it Off the Grid (chron.com) 101

Posted by EditorDavid from the when-the-wind-blows dept.
This week a Florida-based Bitcoin-tech company named MARA Holdings announced it had bought a 114-megawatt Texas wind farm, reports Chron.com, "and will subsequently take it off the power grid and use it to energize its mining operations."

MARA's CEO tells the site they're "leveraging renewable resources that would have otherwise been curtailed" while "reducing our bitcoin production costs through vertical integration, and demonstrating MARA's commitment to environmental stewardship." The wind farms were not a part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, but instead they were located within the Southwest Power Pool, which manages the market for the central U.S., including but not limited to most or parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota... A 114-MW facility could power somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 homes, depending on who you ask...

Historically, the facilities use up a lot of power and have generated backlash from neighbors who have complained about the noise of the machines inside. Texas has been a haven for cryptocurrency tech companies, primarily because of the state's space, deregulated power market and friendly business climate. Two weeks ago, the Public Utilities Commission adopted a rule requiring crypto and other virtual currency miners within the ERCOT grid to register their locations, ownership information and electricity demands, to further ensure that they could be watchful of this emerging source of energy consumption.
"Crypto mining operations currently consume around 2.3 percent of US electricity, and it requires roughly 155,000kWh to mine one Bitcoin," notes the site Data Centre Dynamics. This is the second off-grid power deal MARA has signed over the last few months. In October, it launched a 25MW micro data center operation across oil wellheads in Texas and North Dakota. The data center will be powered exclusively by excess natural gas from oilfield production that would have otherwise been flared. The operation will be distributed across wellheads in Texas and North Dakota, with operational status expected by January 2025.
Some context from Bloomberg: A few years ago Bitcoin miners took part in a global scramble for electricity to power their specialized computers... But the rise of AI, with its insatiable demand for electricity, dwarfed the needs of crypto and upended energy markets worldwide. Miners must now compete with much-larger tech firms for connections to electrical grids and power contracts. "Bitcoin miners are being forced to go look at marginal generation," said [MARA CEO Fred] Thiel. "The AI guys can afford to pay a much higher amount for energy than a Bitcoin miner"... MARA's plan to mine only when the wind is blowing makes economic sense because its mine will house last-generation computers that would otherwise have been retired, Thiel said.
"Thiel said he'd be interested to potentially buy more wind farms over time."

Bitcoin Miner Purchases 112-Megawatt Texas Wind Farm, Takes it Off the Grid More | Reply

Bitcoin Miner Purchases 112-Megawatt Texas Wind Farm, Takes it Off the Grid

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  • Financial post? (Score:3)

    by jrq ( 119773 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:00PM (#65000037)
    That's not Bloomberg.

  • YAAAAY WASTE! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:05PM (#65000045) Journal

    All this power that could've done something useful will now be completely wasted running an unbelievably inefficient currency that's only meaningfully useful to criminals! IT'S TEH FYUCHAR WHOOOA!

    • Yeah but what are you going to do about it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:47PM (#65000085)
      Is this going to change how anyone votes? Is anyone who is prone to vote for social issues (read: woke) going to stop caring about social issues and focus on raw economics like this?

      That's kind of the problem. It's so easy to push our buttons and we have professionals who know exactly how to do it. And they're going to do it and we're going to look at stuff like this and say fuck that sucks but then when the election cycle comes around we're going to worry about trans this or drag queen that or whatever moral panic they gin up for us and then we're going to show up at the polls and say fuck you to the people we're supposed to say fuck you too and forget all about this.

      And in the meantime the cost of our groceries is going to keep going up and cost of everything we buy is going to go up and our bills are going to go up and up and up and up. But there's always going to be that distraction and is always going to be professionals telling us who to get angry at and it's never going to be guys like this who just took 112 megawatts off the grid

      And the most funny thing is I've just triggered the shit out of a whole bunch of people whose power bills are going to go up because of this. What a fucking world.

      • Re:Yeah but what are you going to do about it? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:58PM (#65000093) Journal

        when the election cycle comes around

        "When" seems optimistic these days.

      • Re:Yeah but what are you going to do about it? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @09:47PM (#65000205) Homepage

        And they're going to do it and we're going to look at stuff like this and say fuck that sucks but then when the election cycle comes around we're going to worry about trans this or drag queen that or whatever moral panic they gin up for us and then we're going to show up at the polls and say fuck you to the people we're supposed to say fuck you too and forget all about this.

        Both my partner's family and mine have quite a few Trump supporters. I'm also acquainted with quite a few of my customers who lean that way politically, as well. Perhaps there's some survivorship bias in play, as anyone who really is homophobic probably wouldn't be socializing with a gay couple in the first place, but none of these folks cite the culture war issues as being why they support Trump. In fact, their take usually tends to be that they see it as pandering to the religious right, and that they don't believe homo/trans phobic changes truly will be implemented because they're assuming cooler heads will prevail.

        Most Trump voters aren't as bad as you're making them out to be, and it comes across as incredibly dismissive of their concerns when you just assume they're all a bunch of homo/trans phobes because online forums are full of trolls who celebrate every time they think that their team has scored a point. You have to remember the loudest and most obnoxious voices do not necessarily represent the bulk of Trump's support base. Heck, his most recent rallies weren't even drawing very large crowds, so clearly a lot of folks who voted for him opted out of participating in the circus that is his fanbase. I'm assuming you've heard the entire "basket of deplorables" remark, but I'll go ahead and cite the entire quote, with some context provided by ChatGPT:

        "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up."

        She went on to describe the other half of Trump supporters as people who felt left behind economically and culturally, saying they deserved understanding and empathy:

        "That other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures."

        See that part about "understanding and empathy"? Ironic how a LLM gets it, but you're still having trouble. The understanding and empathy isn't for the racist, the misogynistic, the homophobic, the transphobic, and the xenophobic among Trump's base, it's for the people who voted for Trump because they're struggling to keep food on the table. And they didn't vote that way because they believed culture war issues were at fault, they voted that way because they believed their plight was being ignored by Democrats. That's the issue which sorely needs to be addressed.

        • they voted that way because they believed their plight was being ignored by Democrats.

          Remove "by Democrats" and you have defined why a lot of people stayed home. The "plight" of most Americans is being ignored. It would be hard to find any discussion in the last election of the broken health care system that is both expensive and produces lousy results or the broken retirement system that only works for millionaires or the broken system of higher education that saddles students with debt they will never pay off or the financial system that makes the GDP a measure only useful for the wealthy.

          • People also can make very irrational decisions when they're frustrated with a situation they have no control over. I personally haven't experienced this here, since Florida doesn't have oil furnaces, but this time of year I often read about people who have flooded their furnaces with heating oil because the damn thing won't light and the only thing they know how to do is to keep pressing the "reset" button. This happens even with homeowners who have been specifically told not to press the reset button mor

          • They went to go vote on election Day, Saw lines around the back that would have taken hours to get through and went home. It's an old trick.

            You take the gerrymander maps to tell you which districts are likely to vote for your opponent and then you close the polling locations in those districts. You also send broken machines and this year we even had bomb threats called in.

            All told it looks like 3.4 million people were unable to vote.
            • There were certainly organized voter suppression efforts just as their were organized GOTV efforts. But there are millions of Americans who don't vote and never intend to vote.

        • Should understanding and empathy not be extended to those you think operate out of fear? Not just fear but "phobia?"

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          "...but none of these folks cite the culture war issues as being why they support Trump..."
          And like Trump, we can always trust what they say, right?

          "...they don't believe homo/trans phobic changes truly will be implemented because they're assuming cooler heads will prevail."
          True for some, quite false for others. My mother is a Trumper and would absolutely delight in the worst being done to the LGBT community, despite her having a gay son. She's also in that group that says "we know that these terrible thi

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jbengt ( 874751 )

            We do not have a situation where conservatives are the victims, . . .

            Trump ran the conservatives out of the Republican Party, so I do consider conservatives among the "victims".

        • And that's the problem. There's a phrase for it. The banality of evil. It's how you can easily get large groups of people to allow and even take part in absolutely horrific things by gradually ratcheting up the propaganda.

          6 years ago in midterm elections the Republican party went all in on antitrans rhetoric and it hurt them badly. This year after 10 years of constant propaganda exit polls show that young men in particular and Union men leaned heavily to Trump and social issues like antitrans were a maj

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sebby ( 238625 )

          You have to remember the loudest and most obnoxious voices do not necessarily represent the bulk of Trump's support base.

          True, but then I'd say the 'cooler heads' that are still Trump supporters aren't loud enough (assuming they don't just stay silent) at calling him out on his crap. Kinda like how the 'good cops' stay quiet and don't speak out about the corrupt cops, because their union will frown upon that.

        • Counterpoint: Those "not as bad as you think they are" Trump voters were not only dumb enough to believe that he'll "fix" the economy and that China and others will pay for tariffs (just like he promised Mexico would "pay for the wall"), but they looked at this homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, racist, misogynist, traitorous, vengeful, felonious piece of shit con man and said to themselves, "Yeah, I can live with all that because he'll bring down the price of eggs and gas." OR... They were dumb enough t

        • Both my partner's family and mine have quite a few Trump supporters. I'm also acquainted with quite a few of my customers who lean that way politically, as well. Perhaps there's some survivorship bias in play, as anyone who really is homophobic probably wouldn't be socializing with a gay couple in the first place, but none of these folks cite the culture war issues as being why they support Trump

          I can't help but wonder if demographics come into play. From my experience, younger people seem far more concer

    • It's a religion: "If it makes thee a profit, do what thou wilt."

    • It is, indeed. And the future increasingly becomes a cyberpunk setting - high tech, low life.

    • All this power that could've done something useful..

      What, you mean like social media?

      ..will now be completely wasted..

      Phew. Sure glad we invested in social media instead. For a minute there I was worried we might do something wasteful.

      ..running an unbelievably inefficient currency that's only meaningfully useful to criminals!

      Speaking of useful to criminals, let’s not think too hard as to why the US still prints billions on paper in a digital cashless society not really asking for it. Rather odd when legitimate demand for all those greenbacks fell off a touchless cliff long ago.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. The insanity has reached a new level.

    • I can't believe I'm being told to not pollute, less waste, be more green, etc, etc then you have crypto currencies that waste enough power to run a state. Power that is being pissed away to generate numbers for a "currency" that seems to mainly benefit criminals and nefarious governments.

  • Bitcoiners don't be demonstrably evil (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheStatsMan ( 1763322 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:09PM (#65000053)

    challenge: impossible

    • challenge: impossible

      If the bubble were to pop on $hitcoin, all that “evil” will be back in Mom and Dads basement mining away. Like it was back when BTC was only worth a grand or less. Like it should be.

      Popping financial bubbles, is about as “impossible” as making them. See history.

    • First, they tried bringing old power plants, that nobody uses, online.
      Now they are taking wind farms.

      The fact remains: their venture needs lots of electricity yet nobody will ever be happy with how they get it (carbon yes/carbo no).

  • the good, the bad, the ugly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:09PM (#65000055) Homepage
    Good new, they are using renewable energy. Bad news, could be a rough time in Texas if they get a long term cold storm. The ugly, the AI people are eating up a decent chunk of renewable energy, causing us to keep burning fossil fuels longer then we would have.

    • Re:the good, the bad, the ugly (Score:5, Informative)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @09:15PM (#65000175)

      Bad news, could be a rough time in Texas if they get a long term cold storm.

      No. That's backward. This will make it easier to deal with demand peaks.

      First, you need to understand that TFS is wrong. The wind turbines are not disconnected from the grid. They are just connected to a different grid (Southwest Power Pool rather than ERCOT).

      When demand surges and the price spikes, the miners can pause mining and feed the power into the grid to meet that demand (and profit from the high price).

      Think of the miners as funding spare capacity by utilizing it when it isn't needed.

      • When demand surges and the price spikes, the miners can pause mining and feed the power into the grid to meet that demand (and profit from the high price).

        *exhales*. *inhales really really deeply* ... "Bwahahahahahahhaahahhaahhaahhaahahhahqahahahaaa" *clutches stomach after the painful belly laugh*

        Oh man you got me there. Have you got a Netflix comedy special yet?

        No, precisely zero bitcoin miners are min-maxing their operation with grid connected surge pricing.

      • When demand surges and the price spikes, the miners can pause mining and feed the power into the grid to meet that demand (and profit from the high price).

        That's theoretically true, but these people are Bitcoin miners - economic opportunities outside of digital tulips isn't their strong suit.

  • Less electricity generating potential.

    When the next big weather event happens and their grid gets knocked out (again), they can remember that this wind farm wasn't there to potentially help avert disaster because some crypto bros wanted to make a buck.

    • The outage will somehow still be renewable energy's fault for being hooked up to mining rigs instead of the grid though.

      "Fossil power is safer because it stays connected to the grid, while woke renewable energy gets bought up by computer geeks who don't know that global warming is a hoax!" See, just like that.

      • If they're smart they'll keep the ability to reconnect to the grid. Miners are all going to be about whats more profitable. If there's serious demand on the grid and the wholesale price of electric goes above what they can make mining with it, i guarantee they'll shutdown the mining rigs and sell the electric to the grid instead.
    • Well they were probably running their mining setup on grid already so they will keep consuming electricity just not running it through the grid so not a big difference to the grid situation. Also 112MW probably outputs on average 20% of that so we are talking about 22kW of average generation which is reasonably small. For reasons which are derivable the amount of mining effort will adjust to consume approximately the same amount of power in $ as the cost of a bitcoin. So the way to gain an advantage over ot

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jbengt ( 874751 )

        Also 112MW probably outputs on average 20% of that so we are talking about 22kW of average generation which is reasonably small.

        You moved the decimal point a couple of spaces.

        • Actually this is a good point but that is what is available to the Grid. I think the grid in Texas works on 5 or 30 minutes time slots and when you give a figure to the Grid you will be penalized if you underdeliver for what you deliver so in effect you have to estimate what you will deliver for the next 30 minutes lets say (in MW min value) it will not be allowed to drop below that figure for even 1 second) so you have to give yourself a significant margin of safety to that min output. Also of course the w

  • Capitalism is not the answer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:37PM (#65000073)

    "... been curtailed"

    Why isn't the electricity being sold to another state, since it's part of their grid? Why isn't a kinetic battery being used to time-shift the energy to night-time consumption?

    There's nothing suggesting this power plant is government-controlled, so the owner, of course, has the right to sell it.

    It's no surprise that privately-owned infrastructure is sold/consumed for private benefit. The US fear of socialism means ordinary people are dependent on the charity of corporations. Unfortunately for ordinary people, selling to corporations is less risk and lower cost.

    • Why isn't the electricity being sold to another state, since it's part of their grid? Why isn't a kinetic battery being used to time-shift the energy to night-time consumption?

      Texas doesn't want to be connected to the national grid because they're Texas. They do have small interconnects https://www.king5.com/article/... [king5.com]

      The part that makes me chuckle is the interconnect with Mexico, of all places.

      • My guess an interconnect with mexico probably isn't about importing power from them, but exporting excess power when its profitable to do so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          You would be wrong then. That interconnect is hooked up to the world's largest powerplant. A giant 2.5 GW plant (nuclear of course). It provides mostly baseline power to Texas. It is the other interconnects that handle the variability of the renewables, which is part of the problem for Texas. Their interconnects are too small to handle the very large amount of renewables on their grid. Remember, it actually makes sense to put windmills in Texas, so there are a fair number of them.
      • From the summary above:

        The wind farms were not a part of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid, but instead they were located within the Southwest Power Pool, which manages the market for the central U.S., including but not limited to most or parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota

        Curtailment happens for lots of reasons including grid congestion. There is simply no way to get the power from where it is produced to where it is needed. On site storage would solve that but that may or may not work economically depending on when the power saved could be released to the grid.

    • Just as an aside, property rights (such as the right to sell or buy or hold property) are theoretically state-defined. I say theoretically, because we all know major sectors of state operation are controlled by a corporate complex, and so compels the government to define property rights to suit itself (prime example: DMCA; secondary example: Disney and copyright durations).

  • Average: 2.05 days (Score:4, Funny)

    by NoMoreDupes ( 8410441 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @07:49PM (#65000089)

    That's right: 2.05 days on average between stories about Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency. [slashdot.org]

    • It breaks up the stories about AI.

      • It breaks up the stories about AI.

        At least A.I. isn't a bunch of irrelevant financial news.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Temkin ( 112574 )

        It breaks up the stories about AI.

        Yep, and they still push three climate change stories a day... Which makes this one is a two-fer. The Texas angle is some kind of ideological bonus, even though it's not connected to ERCOT.

  • If crypto mining uses 2.3% of US electricity, as it says in the article, I wonder what percentage AI uses? Between the two of them, that's a lotta juice...

    • Re:That's a big percentage (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @09:06PM (#65000167)
      Funny how, if the entire vehicle fleet went electric, that would add about 20% load to the grid and everything would fall apart. Yet, add crypto mining, AI, and massive data centers for other purposes and there's no concern whatsoever.

      • I would assume that crypto miners and datacenters are located in places close to big power plants with enough capacity to provide them with the required power.
        I would also assume that if the entire vehicle fleet went electric, people would want to charge those cars near their home/work and not drive to the nearest big power plant to charge there. Also, unlike the miners and datacenters, they would charge the cars intermittently (after coming home from work etc).
        So, the distribution would be a problem - upgr

  • There is more wind so if more power is wanted, build more wind farms.

  • Major Spin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bahbus ( 1180627 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @10:08PM (#65000217) Homepage

    Fred Thiel can try and frame it anyway they want. But the fact of the matter is they are taking power away from the grid, and therefore people. He's an asshole and a moron. Build your own private wind farm for your shithole company from scratch. The world would be an infinitely better place if anyone who's ever believed cryptocurrency was a good idea suddenly exploded is a gory mess.

    • Why's anyone sell their existing wind fsrm? And what's stopping anyone from building out more capacity if the market is there for wind? It's not like that wind farm can't be replaced. Also it seems like that particular farm wasn't seeing full utilization...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        Why's anyone sell their existing wind fsrm?

        They probably paid more than it was worth.

        And what's stopping anyone from building out more capacity if the market is there for wind?

        Nothing that I know of assuming someone has the money. The sellers of that wind farm probably won't be building another one, so a net loss for now.

        It's not like that wind farm can't be replaced.

        It's not like this company could have just built their own instead of buying someone else's.

        Also it seems like that particular farm wasn't seeing full utilization

        Doubtful, but also not a reason for a private company to take it all for themselves.

  • Peak Absurdity (Score:3)

    by labnet ( 457441 ) on Sunday December 08, 2024 @10:23PM (#65000229)

    All that concrete and copper and land use... just create worthless digital tulips which are only useful for speculation and graft.
    What a sorry state the world is in.

    • this wouldn't have happened if we had a good monetary system that doesn't print dollar out of thin air

      • You're begging the question. A monetary system that does print dollar out of thin air is precisely what makes it good. It provides a level for stabilising the economy, and as much as people like think that the fed is evil and stick their head in the sand, the reality is floating currencies universally outperform standard currencies when it comes to economic recovery. Heck we even have examples of economies that went from floating currencies back to a gold standard only to realise what a fucking horrible ide

        • printing currency enriches the people who print it, and they're not even hiding this https://www.youtube.com/shorts... [youtube.com]
          paper money doesn't respect the laws of physics. you go to work in order to convert your energy into a form of money. if you want to convert that money to another form of energy now or after 10 years, the value of that money shouldn't go down during those years; otherwise, you have a system that leaks.
          you shouldn't get poorer because you saved your energy in paper form.
          you either defen

    • Cryptocurrency is Fermi's Great Filter. We are getting filtered...

  • Hope you stocked up on blankets and firewood, Texans!

  • for a very high price during periods of extreme cold or heat. What's wholesale power usually go for 3 or 4 cents / kwh ? (we pay around 8 cents total power and delivery near Tacoma WA) . They could wait until near blackout conditions and say sure pay us $1 kwh and we will save your town.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Temkin ( 112574 )

      ERCOT spot price is 18 cents per kWh as I type this, 15 cents market day ahead. Long term contracts in Texas are pushing above 9 cents these days. Oncor keeps upping the delivery charge component, which is assessed separately from the contract price. I snagged a 24 month contract earlier this spring at 11.9 cents, and it's now a 12.9 cent/kWh contract. Lots of gimmick marketing going on in the Texas electricity market. Some of the bigger players try and get 16 cents/kWh and then give you a $500 gift ca

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      LOL you seem not to realize that this a problem because Texas politics WANTS corporate ownership of power, right? If Texas were even capable of wanting to "build nuclear" it wouldn't even be possible for renewable generation to get sold off to private interests.

      In a time were future power generation, and its impact to the planet, is critical to our society it's really not surprising that venture capital is moving to buy as much of it as they can. You know, VC is trying to buy up housing too, right? How l

    • Nixon's Project Independence created a plan for 1000 atomic stations by year 2000.

      The Oil barons and nascent global warming cult sent four CIA contractors to bungle a DNC break-in in response and then Navy Intelligence conspired with FBI to beat the war drums in WaPo.

      Some stolen papers weren't the real issue.

      I am surprised the wiki article is still up.

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