ERCOT (Texas) projecting 17 GW for bitcoin mining in 2026 \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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To clarify, this is referring to bitcoin mining occurring on the ERCOT (Texas) grid.

Today, all bitcoin mining combined might be in that approximate range of 17 GW, using CBECI's estimate:

There are reasons to not take these projections at face value though:

National Grid guy asked how much of this they expected to really come online, ERCOT guy couldn't give a straight answer, but later I thought I heard someone give a historical number of ~30%. They didn't clearly detail on what basis they made this forecast, either.

On the call it sounded like maybe 30% of this comes online.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 28 Apr 2022

And then there's this:

Papers on DR suggest a DR program has diminishing returns after certain size. If payouts shrink, that becomes a constraint on DR participation, too. I don't think ERCOT is considering the next bitcoin halving either.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 28 Apr 2022

And this was a surprising take:

The new problem Texas and ERCOT is facing, with the massive buildout of renewables, is that price of electricity may go to ZERO.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 28 Apr 2022

The full contents of that Tweet:

This chart shows 2026 as having a total of 17 GW of bitcoin miners in ERCOT..

ERCOT said these were "certain, very likely, and likely" requests.

If more speculative requests were included, it'd be even higher.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 28 Apr 2022

The chart is from a document (see below) titled:

Overview of Large Load Interconnection Requests

This Tweet suggests performing word substitution is not entirely wrong:

Bitcoin miners cough cough large flexible loads

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 28 Apr 2022

the task force was created specifically to address crypto IX's. So there is likely some real data center load in there but i'd wager 80%+ of it is mining

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCMiner OP 28 Apr 2022

Source for the chart:

https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2022/04/25/InterimLargeLoadInterconnectionProcess_AggregateData_04262022.pptx

Which is, with other documents, shared here:

ERCOT Large Flexible Load Task Force https://www.ercot.com/calendar/event?id=1649295264273