After the ban on mining in China and the introduction of strict rules in Kazakhstan, many mining centers are located in Siberia. The region already lacks capacity for other consumers, and the volume of industrial mining in the country has tripled in three years. Therefore, the Ministry of Energy announced the development of new regulatory rules for mining centers. In particular, officials want to increase electricity transmission tariffs several times for crypto farms in regions with energy shortages.
Currently, problems with the availability of energy capacity are observed in the Irkutsk region, Buryatia and Trans-Baikal Territory. A large share of farms are located in the Irkutsk region, where electricity prices are the lowest in the country. According to Time2Save, in the Irkutsk region, 1 kWh for legal entities cost about 3 rubles in 2023.
The Irkutsk Electric Grid Company (IESK) stated that the volume of industrial miners is about 1.3 GW. This is the capacity specified in the contracts, but “the actual amount of power used is significantly lower.”
“The price of electricity is of fundamental importance for mining activities,” says Sergei Bezdelov, director of the Industrial Mining Association.
He added that the share of electricity in the costs of mining data centers exceeds 70%.
The press service of the government of the Irkutsk region recently reported that over the past year, legal miners have increased energy consumption by 26% – from 674 MW to 850 MW. Over the course of a year, in the Irkutsk region, energy workers identified 1,968 addresses where miners illegally installed equipment. Owners of underground mining farms were billed for consumption of 347 million kWh for a total amount of 1.3 billion rubles.
Let us remind you that the Ministry of Energy is developing other measures to control miners. Recently, the agency proposed limiting the connection of cryptocurrency mining farms to electrical networks.
Source: Bits
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