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The reason EROCT, the Texas Republicans (TRP) and the minesr are doing this is to raise prices on electrical power. During the right time of year, the cost of
by asciimov 5y ago
The reason EROCT, the Texas Republicans (TRP) and the minesr are doing this is to raise prices on electrical power.
During the right time of year, the cost of power can often go negative overnight. Ercot wants to get rid of this and ultimately raise the price of power as negative power prices have consequences for all the middle men involved. In Texas there are lots of middle men, negative power means they might owe money instead of making money, they all want to be making money.
The general idea is that ERCOT give some guarantees to the miners including rate locks. The miners promise to use so much power and then get to buy the power at a bulk rate. Enough of these miners means that enough demand is put on the system that the nighttime rates never go negative. Long term goal of this is to keep money flowing to the oil and gas companies, the traditional power generators, as well as all the middlemen, regardless of how much green power is invested and built in Texas.
The issue of "too much power" on the grid is something that could be controlled by ERCOT. They could easily put some of the power generators into standby to keep the extra power off the grid.
As for the miners shutting off when demand goes up. They are only going to do that when the price of power goes above the threshold of them not making money off crypto. Since the rate of power in Texas changes moment to moment, and can easily be monitored this is a trivial thing for these miners to do.
Further, the cities and towns that want the miners to be in their town are giving huge tax breaks to these companies to set up shop. In one instance, the miners will end up paying less than a million dollars a year for 10 years, while they estimate they will generate a couple of billion during that same time and bringing well less than 100 jobs to the area.
- beezle 5y agoI've clearly missed something but what is attraction of miners that a municipality would offer any tax breaks at all? (assuming those are property type taxes as there would be no sales tax) As you point out, at the high end it may be 100 jobs, I suspect probably far less are needed to mind the data/mining center?
- asciimov 5y agoIn my hometown, it's in part so they can say they have it and part kowtowing to state Republican leadership.