Can the fragile Texas power grid handle a cryptomining gold rush?
Record-breaking heat has pushed the Texas power grid to the brink. It's also stirring opposition to the energy-guzzling crypto miners who’ve flocked there.
Record-breaking heat across Texas has pushed its fragile power grid to the brink. But extreme temperatures are doing something else in the famously pro-business state: stirring opposition to energy-guzzling crypto miners who’ve flocked there seeking low-cost energy and a deregulatory stance.
Ten industrial-scale crypto miners now draw from the Texas power grid, according to its overseer, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT, as it is known, declined to say how much power the miners currently consume, but Trudi Webster, a spokesperson for the council, said miners’ consumption is anticipated to be 18 gigawatts in coming years. Current grid capacity is around 80 gigawatts, but it too is expected to grow.
Bitcoin miners deploy thousands of high-powered computers to solve complex mathematical equations; when they succeed, the miners earn a bitcoin. Annual electricity use attributed to bitcoin mining roughly equals the consumption of Belgium, according to the University of Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
Since China shut down cryptomining, the U.S. in general, and Texas in particular, have become venues of choice for the industry. Lee Bratcher, founder of the Texas Blockchain Council, a lobbying group, estimated that there are now 40 cryptomining companies operating in the state, including the 10 large ones, double the number just two years ago.
A row of bitcoin mining machines at the Riot Blockchain facility in Rockdale, Texas.Mark Felix / AFP via Getty Images fileThe energy crypto miners use puts “an almost unprecedented burden” on the Texas grid, according to Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of Grid Edge, a unit of Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. Mining “pushes the system closer to dangerous system peaks at all times,” he told NBC News. “It is completely inessential and consuming physical resources, time and money that should be going to decarbonize and strengthen the grid.”
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