Lots of talk this past week about ERCOT, the Texas electricity grid.
The New York Times had an excellent article to help explain what's going on. Link here. Likely a paywall.
Reporter: Hiroko Tabuchi, an investigative reporter on the Climate desk. She was part of the Times team that received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.
When I first saw the headline I thought it was a two-year old story; how wrong I was. Published July 15, 2022. Absolutely amazing. Five words: everything in Texas is bigger. Archived.
Data points from the article:
- Congressional democrats funded an investigation into cryptomining's impact on US energy;
- seven of the largest Bitcoin (sic) -- brand or generic use of the word? -- mining companies in the US are "set up" to use as much electricity as the homes in Houston (all seven companies combined)
- Bitcoin used more electricity than many countries (more data points here)
- Bitcoin uses more electricity than the entire country of Argentina, population 45 million
- Bitcoin located in no less than eighteen states, including North Dakota
- if I'm reading the map correctly, by state, percent of Bitcoin's energy consumption (e.g., twelve percent of Bitcoin's energy consumption comes from mines in Kentucky):
- Georgia: 34%
- Kentucky: 12%
- New York: 10%
- Texas: 8%
- first question: why Georgia, Kentucky, New York?
- Marathon Digital Holdings: one of the largest cryptominers in the US
- currently has 33,000 highly specialized, power-intensive computers ("mining rigs")
- up from just 2,000 one year earlier;
- by early 2023, next year: will have 199,000 "rigs"
- overall, the biggest seven cryptomining operations will increase their mining capacity by at least 2,399 megawatts "in the coming years"
- an increase of nearly 230% from current levels
- enough energy to power 1.9 million homes
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