That may be part of it. There's also this trend in TX to find alternative means to raising taxes, often in the form egregious speeding tickets, but that's harder to scale up to larger municipalities.
ERCOT et al. want to get rid of the night time negative rates that occur when wind power generates excess power over night. Negative power rates end up costing the middlemen money. By offering rate locks for the crypto miners, they are hoping enough of the miners build facilities in Texas that they can soak up all the excess, causing the rates to never run negative. Higher rates fill the pockets of every middleman in the state, and those people line the pockets of the politicians, while costing everybody else.
Denton’s story is a tale of how a small town government embraced something to which it first seemed ideologically opposed. It’s a schematic for how the burgeoning crypto industry — which promises to solve climate change, repair crumbling infrastructure, and fix all manner of societal issues by putting them on the blockchain — is literally remaking communities, hedging their futures on its own unforeseeable success.
Crypto companies looking for cheap energy showed up in Northern New York as well, where there are relatively few people but lots of power thanks to hydro and wind - the St. Lawrence River, which empties from the Great Lakes, powers the Moses-Saunders Power Dam, and big wind farms have sprung up in Franklin County.
The crypto people promised the moon in terms of jobs and real estate investments, but they quickly wore out their welcome. This article is from 2018:
Plattsburgh went over its power allotment and was forced to purchase electricity on the open market for far higher prices. This cost was distributed among the city’s residents, some of whom ended up paying between $100 and $200 more for their electricity than usual.
It's gotten so bad that local cities are planning moratoriums on further cryptocurrency mining development, and any increase in electricity prices is blamed on crypto, regardless of the cause:
Some residents also voiced concerns at the previous town board meeting, stating their electric bills jumped 40-60% from one month to another, saying they have never been charged so much by MED. Some believe that crypto mining operations are the leading cause.
Though Town Attorney Eric Gustafson assured residents that crypto mining operations buy market power based on tariffs set and negotiated by Massena Electric, some residents remain skeptical.
“We ensure everything is done at the market rate for these companies. The tariffs are already in place with Massena Electric and market power is sold to them pursuant to MED tariffs,” Gustafson said during the meeting.
Town officials voted to extend a moratorium on new crypto mining operations in the town during a recent meeting following significant push back by town residents.
Many voiced displeasure with the town for allowing established operations to utilize sea box containers, while others voiced environmental concerns, noise concerns and cited a lack of job and economic stimulation for the region. The moratorium expires on April 30, though officials can vote to extend it again at any time before the deadline.
Who cares if the data center mines crypto, processes Facebook ads, or makes Pokémon appear on people's phones? As long as the city negotiates and put clauses to cover themselves in the contract then they should go for it. Why try to police what some idiotic company or person wants to do with electricity. Put fair costs and reasonable parameters on it, then get out of the way.
I care because it's affects me, my family, the kids of my sister's.
I also care for people around the globe who can't fight for there rights.
And I also care because I believe after science that it will cost us more to fix the co2 consumption than preventing them.
Why to police it? Because: being against crypto doesn't mean or implies if I'm also against pokemon or Facebook ads. Here we talk about crypto.
Now this is a huge waste from a energy consumption (conflicting use of limited resources which are critical for humans) perspective, co2 production and hardware consumption (GPU shortage anyone?)
Fore as someone who is not getting rich of this shit, it should be very clear why I'm against it.
For people in Texas they should be against it for most of my arguments and because it potentially disrupts their power grid and/or they are now competing with Bitcoin prices.
And pls don't come up with some wishfull thinking arguments on how this will create more energy. Miners want to consume as much cheap energy as possible. It's not here to only run when others are okay for it to be run and all additional capacity will go to mining.
The people who care are the ones who know there's a problem, but also don't care enough to root cause it and solve it for real. Moral outrage is an easy way out.
The only thing this addresses is Denton's city debt from an exploded power bill. It doesn't add any generation, and even if the generated crypto income was used to pay for new generation it would almost certainly have to go through a completely different process. In the event of another grid collapse/fuel crunch it couldn't provide any extra energy, and even if they were contracting for more fuel (the result of higher local demand) there's no reason they could get it easier now than before. All this does is burn more energy, likely increasing the price the customers have to pay.
11 comments
[ 13.1 ms ] story [ 51.7 ms ] threadERCOT et al. want to get rid of the night time negative rates that occur when wind power generates excess power over night. Negative power rates end up costing the middlemen money. By offering rate locks for the crypto miners, they are hoping enough of the miners build facilities in Texas that they can soak up all the excess, causing the rates to never run negative. Higher rates fill the pockets of every middleman in the state, and those people line the pockets of the politicians, while costing everybody else.
Crypto companies looking for cheap energy showed up in Northern New York as well, where there are relatively few people but lots of power thanks to hydro and wind - the St. Lawrence River, which empties from the Great Lakes, powers the Moses-Saunders Power Dam, and big wind farms have sprung up in Franklin County.
The crypto people promised the moon in terms of jobs and real estate investments, but they quickly wore out their welcome. This article is from 2018:
Plattsburgh went over its power allotment and was forced to purchase electricity on the open market for far higher prices. This cost was distributed among the city’s residents, some of whom ended up paying between $100 and $200 more for their electricity than usual.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk4qv/bitcoin-ban-plattsbur...
It's gotten so bad that local cities are planning moratoriums on further cryptocurrency mining development, and any increase in electricity prices is blamed on crypto, regardless of the cause:
Some residents also voiced concerns at the previous town board meeting, stating their electric bills jumped 40-60% from one month to another, saying they have never been charged so much by MED. Some believe that crypto mining operations are the leading cause.
Though Town Attorney Eric Gustafson assured residents that crypto mining operations buy market power based on tariffs set and negotiated by Massena Electric, some residents remain skeptical.
“We ensure everything is done at the market rate for these companies. The tariffs are already in place with Massena Electric and market power is sold to them pursuant to MED tariffs,” Gustafson said during the meeting.
Town officials voted to extend a moratorium on new crypto mining operations in the town during a recent meeting following significant push back by town residents.
Many voiced displeasure with the town for allowing established operations to utilize sea box containers, while others voiced environmental concerns, noise concerns and cited a lack of job and economic stimulation for the region. The moratorium expires on April 30, though officials can vote to extend it again at any time before the deadline.
https://www.northcountrynow.com/news/massena-town-officials-...
I care because it's affects me, my family, the kids of my sister's.
I also care for people around the globe who can't fight for there rights.
And I also care because I believe after science that it will cost us more to fix the co2 consumption than preventing them.
Why to police it? Because: being against crypto doesn't mean or implies if I'm also against pokemon or Facebook ads. Here we talk about crypto.
Now this is a huge waste from a energy consumption (conflicting use of limited resources which are critical for humans) perspective, co2 production and hardware consumption (GPU shortage anyone?)
Fore as someone who is not getting rich of this shit, it should be very clear why I'm against it.
For people in Texas they should be against it for most of my arguments and because it potentially disrupts their power grid and/or they are now competing with Bitcoin prices.
And pls don't come up with some wishfull thinking arguments on how this will create more energy. Miners want to consume as much cheap energy as possible. It's not here to only run when others are okay for it to be run and all additional capacity will go to mining.