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Bitcoin Power

Crypto Miners In Texas' ERCOT Region Required To Register, Report Power Demand 48

Posted by BeauHD from the rules-and-regulations dept.
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.

Crypto Miners In Texas' ERCOT Region Required To Register, Report Power Demand More | Reply

Crypto Miners In Texas' ERCOT Region Required To Register, Report Power Demand

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  • Why not... (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @05:42PM (#64971919)

    just charge them more per MWh

    • Corporate rights trump individual rights in modern America.

      • Re:Why not... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Monday November 25, 2024 @05:56PM (#64971953)
        American English now needs a new single short word for "to take precedence over".

        • 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.

      • 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)

          by rta ( 559125 )

          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.

        • 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.

      • Dude, you've got TDS, bad. (this is my attempt at a joke.)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      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.

      • 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)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      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

    • 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 b

  • 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 :|

  • > 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?

    • 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:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        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.

        • 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

      • 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)

          by Asgard ( 60200 )

          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.

        • 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]

      • > 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)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      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.

  • Whoo! Let's enjoy that "small government" that Texas Republicans like to yammer on about. Or, alternatively, where's the "Fk you! I won't do what you tell me!" Texan spirit? This will be interesting to watch as it plays out.

    • 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.

    • Yep. Texas has a huge government because it's a huge state with huge overhead, but its citizens insist on living in a permanent state of denial. ERCOT is doing exactly what any utility would do, but just don't call it "regulation" because the snowflakes in Texas will start having head arteries throbbing in unison.
  • Register my cryptomining rigs? This is a clear violation of my constitutional rights. The supreme court allows me to have bump-stock and fully semi-auto cryptominers. I’m allowed to 3d-print fully functional cryptomining rigs. There’s an entire industry that encourages me to stockpile cryptominers and an entire media empire that tells that it’s ok to exercise my “man card” by spraying cryptominers at the nearest the nearest school or daycare center.

    I think Texas has been ta

    • Jesus, first there was standard TDS, now we have Texas Derangement Syndrome. How long until mitosis creates a third stupidity?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dr. Tom ( 23206 )

        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)

      • You realize, of course, that the truly "deranged" folks are the ones who see a pile of fetid, oozing Cheeto juice, complete with rape charges, bankruptcies, felonies, etc, and think, "Yeah, this guy's the embodiment of perfection!!" Because the rest of us see him for what he is: Cheeto juice, et al, and a complete, utter shitbag. We're not deranged for seeing what's right in front of us.

  • which can result in up to $25,000 in daily fines.

    1 BTC per day.

  • Lol that you have to register with corporate in order to mine anonymous currency

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