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New York Power Companies Can Now Charge Bitcoin Miners More (arstechnica.com)
Last Wednesday, the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) ruled that municipal power companies could charge higher electricity rates to cryptocurrency miners who try to benefit from the state's abundance of cheap hydroelectric power. Ars Technica reports: Over the years, Bitcoin's soaring price has drawn entrepreneurs to mining. Bitcoin mining enterprises have become massive endeavors, consuming megawatts of power on some grids. To minimize the cost of that considerable power draw, mining companies have tried to site their operations in towns with cheap electricity, both in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S., regions with the cheapest energy tend to be small towns with hydroelectric power. But mining booms in small U.S. towns are not always met with approval. A group of 36 municipal power authorities in northern and western New York petitioned the PSC for permission to raise electricity rates for cryptocurrency miners because their excessive power use has been taxing very small local grids and causing rates to rise for other customers. The PSC responded on Wednesday that it would allow those local power companies to raise rates for cryptocurrency miners. The response noted that New York's local power companies, which are customer-owned and range in size from 1.5 MW to 122 MW, "acquire low-cost power, typically hydro, and distribute the power to customers at no profit." If a community consumes more than what has been acquired, cost increases are passed on to all customers. "In Plattsburgh, for example, monthly bills for average residential customers increased nearly $10 in January because of the two cryptocurrency companies operating there," the PSC document says. The city of Plattsburgh, New York has since imposed an 18-month moratorium on commercial cryptocurrency mining to "protect and enhance the city's natural, historic, cultural and electrical resources."
That's not going to happen. It's not even remotely cost effective. These people go for places with hydro because hydro is ridiculously cheap once installed.
Solar is expensive. In comparison to hydro right near the dam, extremely expensive.
Current cryptocurrency is uselss. Unbound computer work for reward is a fundamentally flawed concept. Cryptographic blockchains should be run for maximum possible efficiency, the distributed proof of transfer suffers nothing from being efficient. In fact it gains from it, making cryptocurrencies easier and faster to run. But they aren't designed that way, they're all designed for an gigantically unnecessary amount of compute power to be thrown at them until such time as the amount of electricity and hardware they use is equal to the reward they put out, despite the low, slow amount of transfers they manage.
Cryptocurrencies need to become actual currency, not artificial investment tools that produce nothing of significant value while wasting valuable power and hardware.
Keep in mind that the only thing that is really happening here is that only a fixed amount of electricity is available each month at subsidized pricing rates. The only change here is that crypto miners get lowest priority of subsidized power. For example, lets say that every month the city gets 40 gWh of subsidized electricity from their contract with the power company that permitted the construction of a hydro dam within city limits. On a given month, lets say the residential and non-crypto mining industrial buildings in the city use 35 gWh of power, and the miners use 15 gWh. In this scenario, the miners will get 5 gWh at the subsidized rates, but will have to pay regular price on the remaining 10 gWh past the city's quota of subsidized power.
Seems pretty reasonable to me... the miners still get access to some cheap power, so its better than what they would get elsewhere, but at the same time the consequences of their excessive power consumption doesn't end up forcing the residential customers of the city to buy a percentage of their power at full price, which was what happened previously.
Wasting energy to participate in a pyramid scheme is not a basic need.
Neither is watching porn or playing video games.
Just cut/cap their power supply.
Or maybe power companies should not be policing morality. As long as I pay my bill, what I do with the power is none of their concern.
> Or maybe power companies should not be policing morality.
It's not about morality. It's about contracts: the city council often has a contract with the power company to supply cheaper energy to its inhabitants in exchange for dam building permission, right of way, etc. That makes sense, since the city's job is to do exactly that. But the amount of power granted this way is naturally capped, that makes sense too (for the power company).
Wise up before emptying your neolib bowels all over the place. That stinks.
It depends on how much baking bread and pizza the mining resembles. There's this thing where electric companies monitor kWh amounts from month to month, per business and residence, and charge accordingly. Electricity on a particular grid is a finite resource, and sudden spikes in usage get billed accordingly.
My suspicion based on the summary talking about "towns with cheap electricity" is that miners were expecting to go unnoticed in residential areas while consuming commercial levels of electricity. The summary talks about a jump in costs to residential customers, and cryptomining is pretty squarely a commercial activity.
Long story short: It probably looked exactly like people opened up a bunch of commercial endeavors and thought they were going to only be charged residential rates. Residential neighbors don't like subsidizing one another involuntarily.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
The crypto miners are using over 1000X more power than the standard home. No household cannabis crop is going to use that much power. FTFA, one miner used 33% of the power for the entire town.
And if you actually read the PSC rule, they didn't increase the rates for cryptominers. They increased the rates for heavy users:
"To mitigate the impact on existing customers, the Commission will allow municipal power authorities to create a new tariff focusing on high-density load customers that do not qualify for economic development assistance and have a maximum demand exceeding 300 kW and a load density that exceeds 250 kWh per square foot per year, a usage amount far higher than traditional commercial customers."
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/pscweb/WebFileRoom.nsf/Web/52BF38680307E75E85258251006476F0/$File/pr18018.pdf?OpenElement
My house uses about 4 kWh/ft^2 per year. The rule applies to people using 60 times that. No electrical heating (household or weed) will match that.
From the new PSC rule:
"To mitigate the impact on existing customers, the Commission will allow municipal power authorities to create a new tariff focusing on high-density load customers that do not qualify for economic development assistance and have a maximum demand exceeding 300 kW and a load density that exceeds 250 kWh per square foot per year, a usage amount far higher than traditional commercial customers."
http://www3.dps.ny.gov/pscweb/WebFileRoom.nsf/Web/52BF38680307E75E85258251006476F0/$File/pr18018.pdf?OpenElement
Heavy non-industrial users were getting same rates as households. Not anymore.
You know what's funny? Here in my 3rd world country, I could apply for Industrial power, pay an installation tax for 380V power and then mine away as much as I desire, while paying FAR LESS per KW/h than a home user would.
I guess 'murica has it backwards...
America is mostly like that too. I think we should be going the opposite direction though. I think we should stop giving bulk discounts for electricity or maybe even charge more for electricity to heavy users. If we are really concerned with conservation, charging that same if not more for energy usage to heavy users would help reduce the demand for fossil fuels where it matters.
You could think about it for ten seconds? Or you could read the article?
If your bakery does that then you get the higher rates. If your crypto mining doesn't then you don't.
I don't know if crypto currencies have value. I know generating your own power does have value. Go for it.
meanwhile Venture capitalists say "hold my drink"
Except the city can predict every home's usage based on weather and prior usage. They even show your prior usage by month for the past year on every bill. Nope, at least for austin it is totally about guiding your usage to what they think you should use, 500KWH/mo year round. Now the Nat Gas supplier on the other hand charges a flat rate and gives a slight tweak to the rate based on weather normalization, or the exact opposite of what the electric company does. When the winter is warm, rate is bumped slightly up as usage will be low. When the winter is cold, rate is bumped down as usage is high.