During a winter storm in Texas in December 2022, Bitcoin (BTC) mining operators returned up to 1,500 megawatts of energy to the damaged local power grid. This has been made possible thanks to the flexibility of mining operations and ancillary services provided by state authorities.
In comments to the Satoshi Action Fund, Texas Blockchain Council President Lee Bratcher said miners returned up to 1,500 megawatts to the Texas power grid. This amount of energy is enough to “heat more than 1.5 million small homes or keep 300 large hospitals running at full capacity,” according to Bitcoin advocacy groups’ calculations.
There are no specs on the exact time period during which miners accumulated such amount of power, but from December 24th to 25th, 2022, the global bitcoin mining hashrate dropped by 30%. This will incentivize customers to reduce their consumption during peak demand periods in order to stabilize the grid.
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The winter storms in North America were so severe that they shut down Binance’s cloud mining products from December 24th to 26th. In the days leading up to Christmas, a “bomb cyclone” brought extreme temperatures across the United States, leaving millions without electricity and claiming dozens of lives.
Back in March 2022, the Texas Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT) established an interim process to allow new large loads, such as Bitcoin miners, to connect to the ERCOT grid. Software providers are also working with miners to ensure they have the tools they need to properly enable grid balancing.
With a 14% share of Bitcoin hashrate, Texas is one of the hottest states for Bitcoin mining in the US, along with New York (19.9%), Kentucky (18.7%) and Georgia (17.3%).
