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posted by janrinok on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the cost-of-making-money dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FakeBeldin on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:52PM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:52PM (#697341) Journal

    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...

    This action is in response to an Order-in-Council recently adopted by the government, which instructs the Régie de l’énergie to quickly address the conditions governing the sale of electricity to blockchain companies given the unprecedented request for hookups

    That puts the whole thing in a different light.

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