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One of Canada's largest utilities is planning to make blockchain companies bid for access to electricity.
Hydro Quebec says it will set aside a 500MW block of power that will be reserved for companies that are "using cryptography as applied to blockchain technology." Access to that block will be subject to a bidding process and companies that want to operate their servers and miners will be required to make bids in order to get power.
The starting rate for the bids will be an increase of 1 cent per kilowatt hour above the current price.
The move is an effort by Hydro Quebec to get a handle on an explosion of blockchain related activity (read: cryptocoin mining) that has caused a power crunch in Quebec. The company said earlier this month that it needed to take emergency measures to limit consumption and that "demand exceeds Hydro-Québec’s short and medium-term capacity."
The process will not just be based on how much money companies are willing to spend. Hydro Quebec says it will also consider job implications in the bids, and companies that plan to hire people in Quebec and deliver higher paying jobs (calculated in payroll per MW) will get higher consideration.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @01:03PM (7 children)
What you do with it is none of their business. You use power, you pay. You use more, you pay more due to extra use. Use too much, you pay for infrastructure upgrades, like any other large power sucking business does.
Next: 'well, you use it for something we dont like, we are cutting you off'. where else you going to go? they have monopolies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Saturday June 23 2018, @03:39PM (5 children)
Thanks to planning and permits you simply can't upgrade an electricity grid on this scale, even if you wanted to, within the timeframe of the crypto mining boom that Quebec is dealing with. Provided that they are actually working to make up the enery shortfall, this seems like a pretty fair way of ensuring that those that caused the crunch being the ones that get to make up the shortfall in the interim. Besides, if the crypto-mining company is large enough and is willing to be flexible in how many ASICs/GPUs they are running during peak hours, a little negotiation might well open up those more flexible rates above.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @04:52PM (4 children)
If you could read and comprehend simple sentences, you could see that i understand this. My beef is them getting involved *what* you use the power for, not how much. Its none of their business.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:59PM (3 children)
Contrary to popular opinion, there are some instances where society allocates scarce resources via methods other than price, based on reasons other than simple level of consumption. Welcome to civilization.
Upon demand beyond available supply, the provider usually has government mandated priorities to satisfy. You can't cut power to a hospital, or a port, or even a subdivision of houses just to serve a few high-demand customers who you KNOW to be engaged in non-critical use for personal profit.
So you shed smelters, and similar high demand users first, and you have connection agreements and pricing to allow for this.
They know its a possibility, its in their contract. This is no different than that. No lives are at stake, the fewest people will be inconvenienced, and its all taken care of by contract and expectations.
Further, in this case, its a government run public utility, with a mandate to serve all citizens and voters.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:33AM (2 children)
And sometimes societies kill millions of innocent people. Doesn't make it a good idea.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday June 24 2018, @07:12AM (1 child)
What part of limiting crypt miners energy usage kills millions of people?
Or were you just trying to Godwin the thread?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:23AM
The idea where if society does it, then it must be a good thing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:31PM
If they pay more for infrastructure upgrades it will take a year or two to get it up and running, and that is if no new generating stations or interties are needed (if so add at least another 2-8 years). (Even TFS mentions that Quebec does this as a measure for short- to midterm).
Also seems like Quebec has about an annual shortage of about 2TWh to 6TWh/year (that is about 250MWe to 750MWe on average, however about 60% of it is imported in on-peak hours; so they are about 1GW behind already)
And yes, it is the grid operator's business how you use the power, it is the very essence of their business even - frequency control is a cooperating game, if we have enough selfish users with subpar backup then the grid will destabilize and segment off the selfish users.
The "I do whatever I want" only works for small users (up to about a couple MW), the big users play a different ballgame.
Oh, and just a bit of extra fun, currently the neighbouring provice (ontario) can't really supply as much power as normal due to midlife refurbisment of their nuclear reactors (which temporarily will have them reduced by about 900 to 2400MWe until 2025, after that 900MWe until 2033).
So right now investment in new generating capacity is an even dicier game than normal.