Bitcoin miners in Texas shut down to save energy during heat wave

A bunch of Bitcoin miners in Texas, like Riot Blockchain, Argo Blockchain, and Core Scientific, decided to pause their operations to help out with energy conservation as the state's power grid is feeling the heat during a major heat wave. According to Lee Bratcher, the Texas Blockchain Council president, over 1,000 megawatts of Bitcoin mining capacity turned off their rigs in response to ERCOT's call for energy saving, aiming to help balance the grid.

good info I was looking for something like this.

1 000 MW? At 3.3kw per machine that would be 300k asics? 30 exa? 15% of the hashrate? Where am I making the mistake? And If I don't, $$ eyes!Wow, the diff is down to 95% pace, is this actually real??? Inserting $$ eyes again! Now, the other part, does this mean Texas has 15% of the hashrate?

Nothing wrong with the math, but we can't go with the assumption that 100% of the 1000mw is S19s and the equivalent, and thus there is no way that 1000MW is producing 30 Exahash, also some or many of them could be overclocked, and thus losing efficiency, also since the 17 series and the same generation of what's miner are almost half as efficient, allow me to throw 20 exahash at the wall. But hey, let's pray for a pretty damn warm summer in Texas, I mean nothing is wrong about making more money getting more Vitamin D.

Also keep in mind a good potion of that power is not for mining but for cooling. And as others have pointed out we don't know if it's all the latest and greatest gear or even from whom. The other point that I think many of us know too well is some gear has been known to not always power back on after being powered off. Not that I am pointing fingers at any particular manufacturer here..... -Dave

Some Some Fun Facts based on that; Using the often quoted 3.6 cents per kWh, taking 1GW offline translates to:  $36/hour per MWh or $36,000/hour per GWh  x24hrs @ 1GWh = $864,000 per day That would be direct 'lost' revenue to the electric provider from mining but of course the power IS being used elsewhere so for ERCOT it's more just a matter of shuffling numbers between inputs in a spreadsheet. In and of itself $864k per day would also be what the mining companies are spending for power which in-turn tells us that said companies are (were) mining enough coins to pay that AND pay for the infra/miners and still make decent profits.... As pure Speculation I'd think that ERCOT pays the miners perhaps 1/4 to at most maybe 1/2 of their averaged bill for the shutdowns. If so at least that should be good for at least paying off the infra and miner gear debts so the mega-mining companies are certainly not hurting much.

All depends on the 1000 mw number. some have mentioned 30eh some have mentioned 20eh some have said do not forget the cooling so 30eh = too high and 20eh = maybe and 15eh = truly the correct number. diff has dropped over 4.5% since we were at the 600 block number various quotes below Mikeywith. "...Current Pace:   102.9694%  (593 / 575.90 expected, 17.1 ahead)..." a1 hahrate llc2022 '...Current Pace:   99.3455%  (883 / 888.82 expected, 5.82 behind)...' https://www.bitrawr.com/difficulty-estimator ..."Current Pace:   95.5248%  (1085 / 1135.83 expected, 50.83 behind)" please note all was original from bitrawr.com so from 593 to 883 we dropped about 23 blocks so 290 should have been 313 a solid drop of  7.34 % and we do not know at what point gear was shutting down and from 883 to 1085 we dropped 45 blocks a huge amount say 202 should be 247 so 45/247 = 18.21% now if that is a true number Texas is kicking ass. we need to keep clocking the diff   593  +17   883  - 6 1085  -51 and 18.21 % is over  30eh i think. So we are likely seeing a big Texas shut down combined with many others that are tapping out due to heat and Low profits.

There are also a lot of miners shutting down older less efficient gear in the northern hemisphere now that these hot summer days are fully here. Just in general for the difficulty drop how many S9 and equivalent generation miners are being shut down with electric costs going up and dealing with the heat and.... All of my gear is off, I could probably make a profit on the surface. But every hour I run my air conditioner is one less hour it will work later. Since I would be selling to cover costs and so on it's just not worth it. I have said it before and I'll say it again. Individually 1 and 2 miner people are not that big a deal. But I really think there are a lot more of them out there then people think. And from what I see in the data center that we rent space in I can see how many businesses have a few miners running. How many others are there in the back of offices or warehouses or.... Getting a bit OT from the original point but I do think hot weather does matter more then just in TX for the overall hash rate. Is it more then 2% or 3% tough to say. But it is there. -Dave

Don't ruin my fun!   You neither!   I was looking for the best numbers, a guy has the right to dream a bit, I'm entitled and demand for everyone else to do the same!!!! One thing, now seriously, the whole cooling thing, I don't cool itself is such a large part of energy consumption, the fans we have for ventilation of the whole building are rated 600W and 3100 m3/h.  Semnificative yeah, but large no,  also they mentioned "more than 1000MW". Now for some numbers: 118 blocks in the last 24h, means 81.9 pace, so allow me to still dream about it. The last block was 37 minutes ago, next block fee 32 sat/b, something is definitely happening.

30eh is too high for texas. but 35eh appears to be happening . Look we have 1.7ph on high but we are set to low about 1.4 ph a lot of guys have 10kwatt setups with paid off gear some set too low. so 42th 52th 57th for an s17 means a lot of 3 or 4 or 5 s17 guys have cut power. I am eager to see if we keep popping 111 block days from now til July 22

Keep in mind many miners have been down for a few days or have lowered consumption. https://insidebitcoins.com/news/extremely-high-temperatures-in-texas-force-crypto-miners-to-go-offline Was early on the 12th and was mentioning the shutdowns had begun. As for cooling not playing a large part of the costs it depends on HOW the mine was designed. If it was previously a data center that they took over you NEED the cooling. They were designed and built around active cooling. If it was designed from scratch as a mine then it would have been built to accommodate a large amount of air movement with less cooling. If again there were no other plans for it. A really nice mining center was put up near the NY / Canada border that I got to tour. There were many sub optimal things done for mining because they wanted to have an out / ability to sell the facility if mining did not work so there was more active cooling then needed for miners so they could repurpose rooms for regular data center use. -Dave

I don't really understand why you would use more active cooling in a data center on purpose because this will also drive up the cost of the data center. I have seen pictures of bitcoin mines and some run them basically outside with just a roof above. The same could be done with a data center, but there are many reasons to not do it, like moisture and dirt. I think it is not the case that you can run a bitcoin mine with less active cooling. It is just that people do it, even if there are the same reasons as for a data center that speak against it.

Because in a 'real' DC people want walls and doors and security and redundant cooling and humidity control  and redundant power backup and power conditioning and lots of other things. I can add a lot of power and racks and massive fans and some cooling to an existing warehouse and mine there. But in the end it's a converted warehouse. There is nothing wrong with that, it works fine for that. Quick and simple and fairly inexpensive. When building new if you are getting money from VCs or from any other source it does matter. If you are building new and the area is not going to want / need another warehouse of that size or in that location then your business plan better have another use for the building or it's going to be hard to get money to build it or possibly even permits from the locality. -Dave

And I have an interesting question about building mining farms in such an area? It is hot in summer, so the regulator will ask you to turn off the asics to save energy. It is cold in winter and the same situation will happen. Mining equipment must work.

short sight speculation. I know of a few texas farms with 2 cent power and 35000 s19's. I also know the are on very tight margins as they have tried off loading s19s since march. This could bust them out. But 35,000 x 100 = 3500000 th or 3500ph or 3.5 eh which is only 2%  of the network. diff got stable we are only down 49 blocks and were down 51 yesterday .  so gear is going back on line

Well in Texas space and power are cheap, west Texas is dry so water wall cooling works well. Cheap power is probably the main driver of any farm. Purchase power agreements (and/or riders) that in a nutshell we will sell you this power deeply discounted when in excess (in the case of TX wind) and we will reward you as well when we need you to idle. The math makes it work out for everyone. Here is a rider from my local power authority here in Oklahoma. They also have an agreement to "source" power from Hydro and wind to satisfy ESG requirements if desired. https://grda.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rider-BTC-R-1-effective-2021.11.01.pdf

Wow, I did not know this, this is great information about Texas and mining...

Bit of a necro bump but TX is still paying people not to mine when their power grid can't handle it: https://www.techspot.com/news/100066-texas-power-grid-operator-pays-bitcoin-miner-over.html Have to love Texas economic socialism at it's finest. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses and still have the private businesses make money. Just think Texas has about 31 million people so everyone in Texas just gave Riot blockchain $1.  How can I get in on this action? -Dave

Of course it is more than RIOT earned from mining in August - most of their miners were shut off so power could be used elsewhere.... The 'normal' consumers of power in Texas are *not* spending/losing money on this. When farms are at full power they pay ERCOT far more than what ERCOT credits them when usage needs to cut back. It is a win-win for all parties involved: ERCOT is able to finance building more wind/solar farms because they have a few non-critical but still massive users of the power that justify building more capacity but they also do not have to be too concerned when the wind dies down and the sun sets during scorching hot weather. Riot and the other mega farms simply throttle down so the remaining power can be used where it is really needed. Because the Texas grid cannot send excess power to other states they would be hard pressed to justify building more solar/wind farms just to satisfy peak loads and have 'excess' power capacity wasted during good weather.

My own question is, are there laws available for miner to generate their own electricity just so that they could power the mining farms? Because given the amount of energy been consumed by mining firms, it is best advised they generate their electricity so the Texas government could conserve energy for the rest of the people.