A Canadian utility company that serves the province of British Columbia has announced it will put an immediate halt to all new requests for electric connections from cryptocurrency miners. This is to save money.
The British Columbian government announced the news in a December 21 statement. According to the statement, the pause gives BC Hydro and government the chance to establish a permanent framework that can better balance the needs of crypto miners and residents of the region. This has been described as possible due to the pause.
BC Hydro now has seven bitcoin mining stations connected to its grid.
The outage is unlikely to cause any damage to these six additional windfarms, which together have a total of 273 megawatts.
According to the information, it is not possible for new cryptocurrency mining companies to start the process of connecting to BC Hydro. Additionally, projects already in the beginning stages of the connect procedure will have their progress halted. It was also mentioned that 21 cryptocurrency mining projects have already requested 1,403 megawatts in electricity to power their operations.
According to Ministry information, this amount of electricity would power approximately 570,000 households in the province or 2.1 millions electric vehicles each year.
In December 2022, the British Columbia hydro-electric authority published a paper titled “Crypto dilemma”. The authority warned that a record number of cryptocurrency mining requests could cause a disruption to the energy supply and increase electricity prices in British Columbia.
New York’s state now prohibits proof-of work (PoW), making it the first US state to do so. This rule prohibits any new mining activity that is not entirely powered by renewable energy sources.
