Bitfarms, one of the biggest stock traded bitcoin miner, is to buy an entire hydro-power station in the Baie-Comeau region of Quebec, Canada.
“Our in-house design team and electricians will retrofit the existing structure and expect to bring 11 MW online by the third quarter of 2023.
We expect to commission the remaining 11 MW during the second half of 2024, providing strategic flexibility around the next BTC halving,” said Geoff Morphy, the CEO of Bitfarms.
The 22 MW power station cost $1.8 million, 40% to be paid in cash and 60% in Bitfarms shares.
The agreement also includes a 10-year lease in an industrialized area with the option to purchase at a fixed price throughout the lease term as well as the permitting and zoning for a 22 MW deployment with potential for future expansion on the site.
“We anticipate this 22 MW increase in capacity will add over 600 PH/s when in full production,” said Phillippe Fortier, Bitfarms’ Vice President of Corporate Development.
Bitfarms had 4 Exahash per second (Ex/s) of bitcoin hashrate as of September 2022. This addition therefore brings it to about 5 Ex/s.
That amounts to just a bit more than 1.5% of bitcoin’s total hashrate that currently stands at 350 Ex/s.
And yet for that 1% Bitfarms is running 10 mining facilities around the world in four countries: Canada, the United States, Paraguay, and Argentina.
So showing just how big scale mining has become, but unlike many other energy intensive industries, bitcoin mining is very suited for hydro-power because it is easy to locate mining facilities in remote areas.
Rather than energy having to go to bitcoin therefore, as it does for the actual mining of say gold, bitcoin goes to the source of energy.
Hence Bitfarms says it is “committed to using renewable, locally based, and often underutilized energy infrastructure.”
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- Source: https://www.trustnodes.com/2023/04/12/bitfarms-to-buy-a-hydro-power-station
