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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: 3, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:49PM (5 children)
While I agree with you, I'm not blind to the fact that new companies are sprouting in that area whose energy demands (taken together) are so large that they put delivery at risk.
The obvious question is how to address this. Should the burdens be shared by everyone? That doesn't seem quite fair to the residents.
Should the burden be borne by heavy industry? That doesn't seem quite fair to previous customers - and it's not clear (from the summary) that this would help. It might be one miner starting there, or it could be many miners whose combined load pushes the network beyond its capabilities. So it might hurt large industry (potentially also large employers), while not lowering demand.
Should the residents and the pre-existing industrial customers have some sort of preferred status over the newcoming industry? That's what they're trying here. If you have a better solution, I'd love to hear it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:08PM (4 children)
This is a solved problem with electric utilities all over the world.
People aren't expected to sit in the dark eating cold cereal just so the smelter down the street can melt scrap steel.
The smelter signed a contract that specifies this. They know a shutdown is possible, and they get rate adjustments for this.
The utilities in this case are just bringing another user under the same system of allocation. Nothing new here, other than the energy use is consumed by One or Two people per mining operation, who's work is low priority in the over all scope of societies energy use.
Price and the ability to pay is not the sole allocation criteria. Especially when the utilities are government run.
This isn't that hard to figure out. Its ALWAYS been this way.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:52PM
That sounds reasonable. It even caused me to read the fine article to see why that wouldn't be the case here.
What is rather absent from the summary is that...
That puts the whole thing in a different light.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:03AM (2 children)
Vote buying also gets in the mix. My view is that technology will repeatedly find new ways to exploit the reckless creation of public goods and rent seeking. Most places don't have this problem with cryptocurrency mining, because they don't offer below market electricity. Similarly, most places don't have trouble with ride hailing services like Uber because their taxi services don't have sweet deals or Walmart because their stores don't enjoy rigid oligopolies.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday June 24 2018, @07:20AM (1 child)
Man believes electrical energy generation is a rent seeking exercise. Wow.
Maybe read up on the term?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:25AM
It's the other, reckless creation of public goods.