RE: Argo in Power Generation at West Texas17 Aug 2021 10:58
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/08/02/green-bitcoin-mining-the-big-profits-in-clean-crypto/?sh=47126b3434ce
Riot talk about selling energy from its build it’s bought in Texas.
The largest bitcoin mining operation in America is also in Texas, operated by publicly traded Riot Blockchain ($3 billion market cap) in Rockdale, northeast of Austin, near a giant interconnection that moves 5,000 MW of grid power through a maze of transformers and high-voltage lines. Riot taps directly into this interconnection to draw 300 MW of that juice, which powers 120,000 high-speed mining computers stacked in racks 30 feet high in three narrow buildings, each longer than two football fields. Construction is under way to expand to 750 MW, with 130,000 more machines to be installed by the end of 2022.
Riot has a ten-year contract to buy all the power it needs in Rockdale at a bargain 2.5 cents per kwh, counting a 0.5-cent-per-kwh discount it gets for participating in demand response. It also has the option to resell all its power to the grid. During the Texas freeze, the Rockdale facility voluntarily shut down all mining for two days. Assuming it earned the peak price of $9 per kwh, that’s a $90 million windfall. “At this scale of energy procurement, we are not just mining bitcoin,” says CEO Jason Les. Instead, Riot is acting as a “virtual power plant.”
Les, 35, studied computer science at UC Irvine but first learned about bitcoin while playing professional poker in the mid-2010s—and seeing other players use it to hold and move their winnings without banks. He’s not bothered by bitcoin’s volatility, because he’s all in: “When massive price swings come, they don’t affect me whatsoever. In poker, if you’re good, you’re still losing 45% of the time. I’m very comfortable with losing.”
‘Virtual power plant’
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