Solar panels can be seen in this drone photo at the Impact Solar Facility in Deport, Texas, July 15, 2021.
Drone Base | Reuters
Miami — Blockstream and Jack Dorsey’s blockFormerly Square, construction began at a solar and battery-powered Bitcoin mine in Texas. Tesla..
Tesla’s 3.8-megawatt solar array and 12-megawatt-hour megapack power the facility.
Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back, a British cryptographer and member of the “Cypherpunk” crew, will be on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami at CNBC, where the mining facility is 100% renewable. He said it was designed to be a proof of concept for energy. Large-scale energy Bitcoin mining.
“People like to discuss various factors related to Bitcoin mining. We wanted to prove it. Have an open dashboard so that people can play together, Maybe it can tell other players to join, “Buck said.
The dashboard will be open to the public and will show real-time metrics for project performance, such as output and total mined Bitcoin. According to the company, the new version of the dashboard will also include solar and storage performance data points.
“This is a step to prove our paper that Bitcoin mining can fund zero-emission electricity infrastructure and build future economic growth,” said Buck.
Improving the economics of renewable energy
Western Texas is a mecca for renewable energy in the United States.
Shaun Connell, Executive Vice President of Electricity at Houston-based high-tech company Lancium, said:
However, much of its wind and solar power is concentrated in remote parts of the state. Without financial incentives, there is little reason to build a renewable infrastructure to harness this energy.
Please enter the Bitcoin Miner. When these energy buyers are in the same place as renewable energy, it creates financial incentives for construction and improves the core economy of renewable energy production with instability.
According to Nic Carter of Castle Island Venture, miners will provide demand for these semi-stranded assets, making Texas renewable energy economically viable.
The constraint is that West Texas has approximately 34 gigawatts of electricity, 5 gigawatts of demand, and only 12 gigawatts of electricity. Bitcoin miners can be thought of as temporary buyers who continue to manage their energy assets until the grid is fully able to absorb them.
The off-the-grid mine, which is due to be completed later this year, highlights another important belief in the Bitcoin network, according to Buck. Miners are location agnostic and “can do it from anywhere without local infrastructure.”
If the project proves to be profitable in the pilot phase, Mr. Buck said the company would add wind power to the mix and expand the entire project.
“You are doing some sort of calculation of the optimal economic combination of solar and battery,” Bach said. “We have 3.8 MW of sunlight and 1 MW of mining. We know that peak solar inputs change during the day and, of course, do not exist at night, so they need to be overprovisioned.”
However, adding wind to your mix reduces overall costs and allows you to balance downtime with sunlight.
Ultimately, according to Blockstream, the main goal is to strengthen the Bitcoin network by diversifying the energy sources of cryptocurrencies.
“Using Tesla’s solar and storage technology, we aim to further accelerate the synergistic effect of Bitcoin and renewable energy by collaborating with Blockstream on this full-stack 100% solar-powered Bitcoin mining project. “Masu,” said Neil Jorgensen, Global ESG Lead for the Blockand project. Block Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative Lead.
