Crypto Miners In Texas' ERCOT Region Required To Register, Report Power Demand 66
A new rule passed in Texas requiring cryptocurrency miners using the grid maintained by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to register and report key details about their facilities. CoinTelegraph reports: Under the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUCT) rule (PDF), passed on Nov. 21, Bitcoin miners must share the location, ownership information and demand for electricity of their facilities with the state agency. Miners have only one working day after the date their facility connects to the ERCOT grid to register and must renew every calendar year on or before March 1.
ERCOT is an independent system operator representing 90% of the state's electric load. According to PUCT Chairman Thomas Gleeson, the new rule was designed to help manage the power grid as more mining facilities come online. "To ensure the ERCOT grid is reliable and meets the electricity needs of all Texans, the PUCT and ERCOT need to know the location and power needs of virtual currency miners," he said. Bitcoin miners who fail to register under the PUCT rule will face a Class A violation, which can result in up to $25,000 in daily fines.
ERCOT is an independent system operator representing 90% of the state's electric load. According to PUCT Chairman Thomas Gleeson, the new rule was designed to help manage the power grid as more mining facilities come online. "To ensure the ERCOT grid is reliable and meets the electricity needs of all Texans, the PUCT and ERCOT need to know the location and power needs of virtual currency miners," he said. Bitcoin miners who fail to register under the PUCT rule will face a Class A violation, which can result in up to $25,000 in daily fines.
Why not... (Score:3)
just charge them more per MWh
Re: (Score:2)
Corporate rights trump individual rights in modern America.
Re:Why not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
American English now needs a new single short word for "to take precedence over".
Because the mere mention of the existing word strikes fear? I think there's a line in Harry Potter about this.
Re: (Score:2)
Corporate rights trump individual rights in modern America.
If you were the power operator, you wouldn't want to know who was sucking up all the electricity and causing your grid to collapse in summer/winter? You don't want to know who's using your gird?
Re: (Score:3)
I mean... they still have a power meter. Presumably their power usage is measured at least hourly of not more often. And presumably they pay for it monthly. Whether they're smelting aluminum, hosting YouTube, mining BTC, charging cars, or running the AC it doesn't much matter unless you're looking to discriminate.
from a predictive modeling POV it might give you more info, but a more straightforward and non-creepy way to do that is to ask peoe about how much power they plan to use.
Re: (Score:2)
If you were the power operator, you wouldn't want to know who was sucking up all the electricity and causing your grid to collapse in summer/winter? You don't want to know who's using your gird?
Sounds like I'm a shitty power operator if I have no idea how much customers are using.
Re: Why not... (Score:1)
Perhaps people should learn to read before making idiot comments. The regulation is for facilities of 75MW or more (basically datacenters) to register the amount of load they can shed flexibly in case that is necessary.
Basically Texas is making a reverse battery with cheap energy, where your solar/wind (and hopefully nuclear in the future) is guaranteed to be used, regardless of the current demand from residential or light commercial, basically those datacenters can turn down their use whenever needed, with
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Same reason people with solar don't get charged more, even though they're far more destabilizing from grid's perspective compared to miners as they're extremely intermittent.
It's a basic utility that everyone can connect to, that is a baseline requirement for modern life.
Re: Why not... (Score:2)
Solar is not at all destabilizing because you can simply not use it. Inverters don't run away when there is no load, they maintain a constant frequency and in fact are better at it than anything else.
Re: (Score:2)
Inverters sync to the grid and unless the frequency is way off or the voltage is too high, the inverter will happily supply power to the grid. At least this is how it is for home solar. I'm sure a cloud rolling over a city with a lot of solar panels on the roof is annoying for the grid operators.
Re: (Score:1)
It's not annoying, it's dangerous. Early on, I remember quite a few reports of transformers having to do emergency cut-off to avoid transformer fires at substations poorly prepared for those spikes. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few transformer fires when it didn't switch off fast enough as well when cloud passes a point with too much solar on a small enough grid.
Nowadays we have heavily invested in automation and extra transmission capacity that wouldn't be necessary without home solar to avoid e
Re: Why not... (Score:3)
Thatâ(TM)s not ERCOT fault. That is TUC (Texas Utility Commission). ERCOT can only do what TUC lets them do. And TUC is appointed by governor.
Re: (Score:2)
Thatâ(TM)s not ERCOT fault. That is TUC (Texas Utility Commission). ERCOT can only do what TUC lets them do. And TUC is appointed by governor.
Show where this is true because that sounds completely nonsensical. Why can't a company go ahead and winterize without having to get approval from political appointees? This article [kvue.com] outlines steps ERCOT supposedly took last year to enhance their system, which included winterization projects.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, the utility companies could do it. ERCOT is not a utility company. It's the government management layer for the grid as a whole.
The improvements that ERCOT did were in response to the TX legislature acts last session.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not just charge them more per MWh
Why would we charge them more per MWh?
The invisible hand of the free market is doing something here. Governments can throw money and regulations at it, but it'll be an uphill battle that will end up costly to taxpayers. If there's a fundamental imbalance where the free market price of something is different from what we think it should be, it's better to think what is the root cause of this imbalance than to spend taxpayer money to patch up the symptoms. I'm not sure what the root cause is in this case, oth
Re: Why not... (Score:2, Funny)
free market? Might as well appeal to the Easter Bunny.
Re: Why not... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, do that too, IDK, but it's not the point. The state wants to use them as sand bags.
As in take their money when everything is running smooth, because from that standpoint they're good customers. They buy a lot of electricity and are predictable. Then cut them off first when there's a loss in power generation like what happened a few years ago, the freeze.
From my point of view it's a huge waste of electricity and money but some dipshit out there buying buttcoin is paying for it. So ERCOT gets a higher base load all paid for and online ready to go short notice. They can turn off miners faster than additional power generation can be spun up, probably, I think that's the idea. They just need to know who all the miners are.
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually pretty normal for commercial customers. Large commercial consumers are contracted to provide a schedule of when they expect to use power (can be 24/7), and pay a rate that is based on the cost of energy at the time of use. Sometimes that rate goes negative, because it is cheaper to pay large consumers to turn their loads off than it is to generate extra electricity to meet high demand.
The issue with Bitcoin is that people are setting up mining operations outside that system, and the goal is
Re: (Score:1)
Sure, do that too, IDK, but it's not the point. The state wants to use them as sand bags.
As in take their money when everything is running smooth, because from that standpoint they're good customers. They buy a lot of electricity and are predictable. Then cut them off first when there's a loss in power generation like what happened a few years ago, the freeze.
From my point of view it's a huge waste of electricity and money but some dipshit out there buying buttcoin is paying for it. So ERCOT gets a higher base load all paid for and online ready to go short notice. They can turn off miners faster than additional power generation can be spun up, probably, I think that's the idea. They just need to know who all the miners are.
Your take makes sense, especially the part about using miners as "sand bags." The predictable demand crypto miners create does make them an easy target for curtailment during emergencies. ERCOT probably sees miners as a way to stabilize base load during normal conditions while having a switch they can flip when things go sideways—like during the freeze you mentioned.
That said, the enforceability of this new policy raises questions. ERCOT has established load-shedding protocols, and the Public Utility
Normal people bear the costs (Score:2)
Crypto miners are using so much power, they're keeping demand artificially high
which is why my electric costs are nearly double what they were before the Crypto
Bros showed up.
Some estimates show they're using nearly 2-3GW per DAY.
( which is insane )
I've done everything I can to reduce how much power I use, yet I still end up paying :|
nearly twice the costs
Re: (Score:2)
Let's repeat the entire joke:
"There's nothing in Texas but steers and queers."
"There's no queers in Texas!"
"Oh, that's right. Y'all left."
Re: (Score:2)
Let's repeat the entire joke:
I think people are more familiar with it these days as a reference to a line in the 1987 film Full Metal Jacket [youtube.com], where it's not really a joke but an insult delivered by a Drill Sergeant. Also, that line kind of aged like milk. Partly out of respect for the LGBTQ+ folks working in creative roles in Hollywood, and partly because a majority of people in developed nations see no problem with homosexuality. [pewresearch.org]
As to our fictional Drill Sergeant, to him I'd say: "Am I supposed to be offended because you said I'm qu
Re: (Score:2)
I'm familiar with it from the less edgy (but also pretty dark) "An Officer and a Gentleman" (1982) https://youtu.be/6lGs-tXWpR4 [youtu.be] this scene is from the beginning, but there's a reprise of sorts at the end as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
hold on, let me put on my horns.
Are texan utility people really that incompetent? (Score:2)
> must share the location, ownership information and > demand for electricity of their facilities
Exactly how could the power companies *NOT* know who is connecting to their network, where the connection is located, and how much power the connection uses? Does the state's whole power grid work on the honor system or something?
Re: Are texan utility people really that incompete (Score:4, Insightful)
They know something connected but not the nature of the thing. This is about being able to drop miners in event of a power shortage ⦠the inevitable power shortage thanks to deliberate design of our Tx grid.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd think it would be better to have those customers who need guaranteed uptime, like hospitals, to register (which they would do eagerly). Then, when conditions warrant, cut off any other heavy users (using the computerized, remote control meters they undoubtedly have in place) until the load stabilizes.
You know, like other electric utilities do.
Re: Are texan utility people really that incompete (Score:5, Insightful)
Texas utilities maintain a list of customers to proactively cut off when power is short. The hospitals, etc, are registered as critical infrastructure, but Texas needs to know the other end of the spectrum to be able to drop in order to maintain most users on days of high strain -- the grid deliberately isn't staffed to handle max common load. There's a priority ordering even among those who don't require 100% uptime. It is a terrible design for customers, but it means larger margins for utilities, so that's what Texas built.
Re: Are texan utility people really that incompet (Score:1)
If you build capacity and then donâ(TM)t use it, it will be more expensive (as the infrastructure cost stays the same) than using the capacity over a greater number of customers.
That is the problem with solar/wind which Texas was forced to heavily invest in, as you see in California and Europe, it gets produced and wasted or sold at negative rates, especially when you donâ(TM)t need it which could be destabilizing. If you guarantee 100% usage at all times, that spreads the TCO over a greater numbe
Re: Are texan utility people really that incompe (Score:2)
The renewables would be fine if Texas grid connected to other states to sell excess power. But the grid is isolated (for freedom!) so no resale market.
Switching to non-CO2 sources is critical for amelioration of climate change. Texas has to pay more for that than other states because of the isolated grid.
Re: (Score:2)
1. It is designed to create "emergencies":
2. During emergencies power producers get to charge up to 30X normal: capped at $9000/MWh
3. During these emergencies, bulk purchasers who curtail their use get credited at the value of the Emergency Wholesale Price.
Emergencies are frequent enough in the summer that Bitcoin miners can operate for months without paying for electricity so long as they are off during the majority of peak hours
Re: (Score:2)
They know something connected but not the nature of the thing. This is about being able to drop miners in event of a power shortage ⦠the inevitable power shortage thanks to deliberate design of our Tx grid.
Sounds more like the “inevitable” part will happen because of the 21st Century invention known as crypto mining.
I don’t recall labeling struggling network engineers barely able to keep up with the bandwidth demand of Netflix as evil masterminds of a “deliberate” design to cripple performance. It was merely a bunch of network engineers having to suddenly deal with THE network demand of the 21st Century. Why exactly do we not see our crippled power grids and operators as the sa
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't there some move by the ISPs to charge Netflix etc to allow content to traverse their lines?
Anyway, power doesn't degrade as gracefully as streaming. Either you have 120v / 60hz, or you sag more then a few % below that and equipment fails => rolling blackouts. Media can downgrade the bitrate it is using. It is rare for equipment to be able to have a way of sensing this and load-shedding.
However, it does seem like registering critical loads is more beneficial then registering noncritical loads.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh -- you must be from a state with a functional grid. I said "inevitable" because Texas grid is designed to not be able to support max load. We *assume* a certain number of brownout days every summer/winter. It supports the 80% use case, not the 99% use case most states. The cryptominers and data centers aren't creating our problems -- the Texas Legislature took care of that. Here's a deep dive into the politics if you're interested:
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1004840920/the-disconnect-power-politics-and- [npr.org]
Re: (Score:2)
> the inevitable power shortage thanks to deliberate
> design of our Tx grid
So, basically the texas electric people really are as catastrophically incompetent as I suspected; just with a slightly different kind of incompetence than I previously assumed. :)
Re: (Score:2)
I like to describe them as "dangerously competent in malicious skills".
If you want more details, here's a multihour podcast looking at the Feb 2021 grid failure and why it can be called a success of the design. [npr.org]
Re: (Score:1)
> ...able to drop miners...
What are you smoking?
If I am on the grid to receive power (and pay for it) then that's the end of the story. PROVIDE the power. BILL me. Do not ever disconnect a customer.
It makes no difference if I'm a miner (not), a minor (not), a police station, hospital, trauma center, city government, or anything.
If you CANNOT deliver the power get the hell out of the stupid state of Texas and have someone who can be a RELIABLE UTILITY take over.
And stop smoking the "it's ok to disconne
Re: Are texan utility people really that incompet (Score:2)
I am not the one smoking anything. I am telling you how the Texas grid is designed. The grid only supports 80% of expected max demand. That means fewer plants standing idle most of the year. It means some customers get dropped during temporary brownouts. It also means there are no backups to cover failures. (But if a few people die every year for lack of power, that is just the price of freedom, right? /Sarcasm.)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, in California we've had smart meters that do report back to the power company since I don't know how long. They were rolled out *sometime* in the last two decades... I remember the tinfoil hat brigade whinging about them as a conspiracy to control people's minds or give them cancer or autism or some other whackadoodle bullshit... but I'm not sure exactly when. Considering that PG&E's people are idiots well beyond brownouts or blackouts and have actually killed (many) people and destroyed entire
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly how could the power companies *NOT* know who is connecting to their network,
Prepaid metering. Someone has to sit there and stuff quarters in a slot to keep the power on.
Small government (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Most often, the "small" part of small government refers to the minorities that Republicans will heavily regulate. "Rules for thee, not for me", and all that. I doubt cryptominers represent much of a voting bloc.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, is the state requiring me to (Score:2)
I think Texas has been ta
Re: Wait, is the state requiring me to (Score:3)
Jesus, first there was standard TDS, now we have Texas Derangement Syndrome. How long until mitosis creates a third stupidity?
Re: (Score:2)
People worry about the radiation from cell phones, but consider the scale. You get a bigger dose of radiation just by taking your hat off in Texas (this is even more true in Florida, which explains some things)
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong fine (Score:2)
which can result in up to $25,000 in daily fines.
1 BTC per day.
Ipmrpove Texas's Infrastructure (please!) (Score:1)
I lived in Texas for about a year, in Austin. Being from a colder climate, in New England, I was shocked when a simple ice storm brought down entire parts of the city and we lost electricity for three f'ing days. Some more.
The point here is Texas has no reason to do this, other than for control at the behest of a federal interest I bet.
Anyone that lives in Texas knows their infrastructure is TOTAL SH*T and some simply don't care. When I questioned locals about the above storm, I've been told "Welcome to T
Re: (Score:2)
When I questioned locals about the above storm, I've been told "Welcome to Texas."
Yeah, land of ruggedness, self reliance and all that. Go to Harbor Freight and get yourself a generator - problem solved. Next you'll be telling me that you don't even own a gun.
anonymous (Score:2, Insightful)
Lol that you have to register with corporate in order to mine anonymous currency
Re: (Score:2)
You must register with energy grid management, when your facilities draw high volume of electricity from the grid.
They probably won't have to do that, if they run their own gas powerstation
Late stage market capitalism insanity. (Score:2)