Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: Bitcoin mining raises Texas power bills by $1.8B annually
“So collectively, it's 1.8 billion conservatively per year. And that's sort of a run rate, I would say. And that represents around a five percent increase in costs of Texans, of, you know non-Bitcoin mining consumers. And that, that's across all the different s…”
Assertion Supported
WattTime finds 85% of Bitcoin mining load is powered by fossil fuels
“And so Watt Time, that is the general methodology that they use. They found that 85% of incremental load from Bitcoin mining comes from coal and natural gas plants.”
Insight
Hertz-Shargel: Siting Bitcoin mines beside existing renewables merely displaces clean power
“The reality is that The total number, the total amount of load on the system has grown, and therefore all you've done is displaced other customers who would be served by that renewable generation. So it's, and so your number of pigeons has grown, and so you kn…”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: Many Bitcoin miners run even at $4,000/MWh power prices
“Some miners do have a price threshold which empirically is between 103 hundred dollars per megawatt hour but many have basically no threshold, and they will continue running up even into the thousands, up to 4000 dollars per per megawatt hour.”
Insight
Hertz-Shargel: Grid power resale by Bitcoin miners creates no public good
“But really, the way to view this is, this was a generation that was sitting there that they were otherwise consuming. They are just refraining from consuming it at these, during these periods. So you can't credit them for, Again, for a good, you can only credi…”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: Major Bitcoin mines are not signing offtake PPAs with new renewables
“So they are not signing new PPAs with new wind to as off takers to kind of make these plans happen. They're signing PPAs with retailers and utilities mostly conventional types of deals, such as being put on base interruptible rates. So, you know, it provides d…”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: Bitcoin Miners Restart Defunct NY Fossil Plants
“They also chase defunct oil and gas plants because those can be sort of rehydrated and turned on and used directly for mining. And so that has happened a lot, especially in New York, these sort of mothballed plants that are able to be turned on and run Pretty …”
Opinion
Hertz-Shargel: Flared-gas Bitcoin mining appears to offer a net emissions benefit
“My understanding is that flaring is very kind of deeply imperfect in that you do a lot of methane leakage or more than you'd want, and that if you are properly capturing this flared gas, this gas, and you can run it through, you know, a sort of a gen set to, a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hertz-Shargel: Bitcoin mines operate online 78% to over 90% of the time
“What I have seen surveying a number of mines is they're kind of, they're online roughly in the high seventies in percentage, you know, say 78% of the time, all the way up to the high nineties.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hertz-Shargel: Some Bitcoin mining PPAs mandate over 85% load factor
“Some of the power purchase agreements That miners have secured require a high load factor, meaning, you know, you need a high average power relative to your max power, which basically requires you to be on most of the time. And so I've seen one contract that r…”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: Most Bitcoin mines can shed nearly 100% load in seconds
“Most mines can drop up to close to a hundred percent of their load within seconds, if not minutes.”
Prediction Held up
Hertz-Shargel: US Bitcoin mining capacity will double or triple soon
“I think roughly speaking, it's certainly set to double or triple in the next few years. I don't have a precise number, but it's certainly large enough that it's going to have an outsized impact.”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: US Bitcoin mining capacity is around 3.9 gigawatts
“So right now total capacity is around 3.9 gigawatts. And that is the finding of this New York Times study that I'm sure we'll be talking about a little bit later. Mines themselves, well, in terms of geography, they are scattered across the country, and we're Y…”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: US Bitcoin mines range from 10MW to 450MW in capacity
“And you know, the mines themselves are pretty broad in terms of the range of capacity. They go down to around 10 megawatts and then up to four 50, which is the largest.”
Assertion Partly supported
ERCOT Responsive Reserve Service paid $180 per kilowatt-year in 2022
“If you were to participate in the responsive reserve service, RRS, last year you would have earned a 180 dollars per kilowatt year, which is a really high number.”
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: King Mountain nodes see negative pricing 12.5% of the time
“When you look at the transmission nodes where this project interconnects, you see negative pricing around 12 and a half percent of the time.”
