Riot Blockchain Suspended BTC Mining During Texas Heat Wave

Upon request of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain suspended operations in its Texas plant sometime in July. 

The state was overwhelmed by an energy crisis that demanded that miners paused their activities to give back power to the grid. Collectively, as an answer to the call of the authorities, miners in Texas returned over 1000 megawatts of power.

In the city of Texas, there is a demand response program that entails that miners refund power to the community in the form of mining load. 

This happens when the power demand overwhelms the grid. Under those circumstances, the miners are compensated with a payout. Particularly, this was the case with Riot Blockchain in July.

On July 8, Texas suffered a heat wave which necessitated the need for more energy to power more air conditioners and other cooling gadgets.

Power consumption skyrocketed to 78,206 megawatts compelling ERCOT to call on industrial-scale miners. Alone, Riot Blockchain curtailed 11,717-megawatt hours in July, giving back enough power for 13,121 homes in a month

Riot Blockchain Receives $9.5M as Compensation

Consequently, the crypto miner announced on Wednesday that it had received $9.5 million as a reward which would be credited against its power account. This compensation, based on the July average market value, is worth about 439 Bitcoin (BTC). The compensation far outweighs Riot’s BTC production the previous month which was 318 BTC.

Compared to its 443 BTC output in July 2021, the 318 BTC was 28% less. As of July 31, Riot Blockchain had 6,696 BTC from its self-mining operations. Thereafter, it sold 275 BTC at approximately $5.6 million. 

Currently, the crypto miner has a deployed fleet of 40,311 miners, with a hash rate capacity of 4.2 exahash per second (“EH/s”). The hash rate capacity is as a result of the relocation of its miners from its facility in Coinmint’s Massena, New York to the Riot Whinestone Facility.

There has been a major promotion of crypto mining in Texas and as a result, Fort Worth, a city in Texas recently launched a bitcoin mining program.

To promote bitcoin mining in Fort Worth, the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) which is a blockchain advocacy body made up of active players in the sector donated three Bitmain s9 model bitcoin mining computers to the city.