TEPCO, Japan’s largest power producer, has launched a pilot project to mine Bitcoin (BTC) from surplus electricity from renewables.
TEPCO starts mining Bitcoin
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), Japan’s largest power producer, starts mining Bitcoin (BTC). More specifically, this new activity will be operated by Agile Energy X, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the group.
TEPCO is best known for operating the infamous Fukushima nuclear power plant, whose financial shortfall caused by the disaster led to the company’s nationalization.
If in its press release, TEPCO does not speak explicitly of Bitcoin, it is just like. Indeed, the company announces having acquired 1,300 ASIC KAMIKAZE from the company TRIPLE-1and said ASICs are precisely designed for mining BTC.
It is therefore a pilot project, which was set up in Tokyo, within the premises of TEPCO Power Grid. This project was baptized MW2MH for “MegaWatt To MegaHash”, in reference to the unit of measurement used to express the computing power deployed in a blockchain operating with consensus by proof of work (PoW).
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Consuming excess electricity
To supply this installation, Agile Energy X will primarily use renewable energy from surplus production that cannot be stored. She thus gives an example with a scenario involving photovoltaic energy, which would produce more than necessary on a day of strong sunshine:
” Rather than [de gaspiller] electricity that exceeds demand and congest the grid by forcing it to flow into power lines, this project aims to create new demand for data centers and other facilities, thereby promoting โlocal generation for the local consumptionโ of surplus electricity. ยป
Otherwise, the company also touts the merits of blockchain. And for good reason, the possibility of using a geographically decentralized database is a major asset in a country “where natural disasters occur frequently“. Thus, such a model is less impacted by these disasters than a single data center would be, for example.
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Source: Press release
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