Texas BTC Miners Power Down As Heat Wave Threatens Grid

The Texas BTC miners power is down as the heat wave threatens the entire grid and the collective move returns over 1% of power in the state back to retail and commercial users so let’s read more today in our latest Bitcoin news.

All industrial-level BTC miners in Texas fulfilled their promise to suspend operations while the state waited out a heat wave that is expected to push the electricity grid to the limits. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is responsible for managing the Texas grid and made a request that residents of the state made an attempt to conserve as much energy as they can in order to avoid the rolling blackouts which plagued the state in the summer in the past. The power outages in 2021 for example, contributed to a few hundred deaths state-wide.

Texas set an all-time peak record for energy use recently as it consumed 78,206 megawatts of electricity and the previous unofficial record was set back in July which reached 77,460 megawatts. Lee Bratcher the president of the Texas Blockchain Association said that over 1000 megawatts in mining loans responded to the state’s request:

“This represents nearly all industrial scale Bitcoin mining load in Texas and allows for over 1% of total grid capacity to be pushed back onto the grid for retail and commercial use.”

The Texas BTC miners power was down when the state became one of the top US destinations for miners because of the liberal regulations and the welcoming leadership. New York is one of the rival states by hash rate and left carbon-based mining on the edge after the state passed a two-year moratorium on the practice. Governor Kathy Hochul however got the final word and Kevin Zhang of the BTC mining company FOundry said that he thinks miners are being scared off from the states because of these policies.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott took the opposite approach which was counter-intuitive and Abbot thinks that inviting more miners to the state can remedy the unstable grid by incentivizing the creation of power generation facilities. Some of the state miners include North American giants such as Argo Blockchain, riot Blockchain, and Core Scientific but despite 2021 being successful, most of the companies were forced to sell bigger amounts of BTC due to the crash in the markets.