BTC Miners Will See 29% Rate Increase On Hydroelectric Power

BTC miners will see 29% rate increase on Hydroelectric power in Washington as it seems that charging the miners the highest rate was not enough so let’s have a closer look at today’s latest Bitcoin news.

Chelan County now implemented a new crypto rate of 29% higher and the promise of cheap power for miners in Washington started to fade away. A 29% rate hike for hydroelectric power in Chelan County created specifically for crypto miners went into effect on June 1 and the miners used to pay a lower load rate for their electricity so now they will have to pay a new rate known as Rate 36. The Chelan County Public Utility District Commissioner Gary Arsenault added:

“What we did as a commission, and what we did as a utility was industry-leading, to create a new rate for this type of demand.”

Washington state accounted for about two-thirds of the hydroelectric power generated in the US back in 2020 according to the Energy Information Administration and the state’s Grand Coulee Dam on the Colombia River, powers a 6809 megawatt. The cheap and renewable hydro power made Washington a popular state for BTC miners and the state accounted for 4% of the total US hashrate as per the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Hashrate is a measure of the total computer power on the blockchain and each hash represents a guess at the cryptographic string on the PoW blockchain networks like BTC the miner that correctly guesses it will win the right to verify the block’s worth of transactions and receive a reward. One exahash represents one quintillion of these guesses and requires a lot of power. Georgia accounts for 31%, Kentucky and Texas 11% each, and New York Generates 10%. this could soon change however if the New York governor Kathy Hochul signs the two-year crypto mining moratorium into law and she is expected to veto or sign the bill next week.

Last year, the Canadian BTC miner Bitfarms acquired a 24-megawatt Washington facility which is powered by the Grant County Public Utility District. The facility generated 17% of the power required to run Bitfarms’ entire 3.4 exahash operations like Paraguay, Canada, and Quebec. The BTC miners will see an increase in a rate now and KPQ reported tht the nearby Douglas County stopped allowing these miners to set up the operations beucase they already consume 25% of the country’s available energy. PUD commissioner Ann Condon added:

“We need to have some sort of transition. That’s important for business. I understand how businesses need that in order to plan.”