Digital Utility Group
The mission of this group is to bring together utility professionals in the power industry who are in the thick of the digital utility transformation.
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Will the Appetite for Cryptocurrency & Blockchains Eat Up Renewables?
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A recent Energy Central story on the Greenidge Power plant in Dresden NY lead the charge in challenging gains the renewable have made over the last few years. Will the appetite for power to generate cryptocurrency out pace or set back the ability to produce enough renewable electricity? "Greenidge is currently only using 19 megawatts of capacity and plans to ramp-up to full capacity by the end of 2022, which would put out about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, 65 percent over the plant’s current permit allowance. According to Coindesk, the plant plans to reach 500 megawatts of mining capacity by 2025, a nearly 25-fold increase over their current consumption. However, the getting’s been good for Greenidge so far and they have no incentive to stop: the plant has reportedly mined 1,186 Bitcoins in the year that it has been operating, at a cost of $2,869 each. Assuming Greenidge sold them all at current boom levels, that’s a profit margin of a little under $70 million. Returns like that would be enticing to any formerly bankrupted power plant looking to reopen." Will job opportunities, economic pressures, a food chain for tax roles? Will bitcoins reverse the trend of closing nuclear plants? Scott Madden is reporting on the potential of using nuclear power to support bitcoin generation. The Ukraine is already planning to do it. Will utilities look to crytocurrency to get back to pre-covid generation levels. Interesting times!! I can't answer the strategic planning questions, but it does look like a lot of data that will be served up for us analytics practitioners to work on..and a lot of bitcoins to "byte'.
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