Bitcoin is mined with the sun in Australia
A new solar-powered Bitcoin mining farm has opened in Australia.
It is a 5 megawatt data center powered by Lumos Digital Mining.
Lumos Digital Mining is an Australian company that specializes precisely in mining with renewable energyso theirs is nothing more than an attempt to expand their business.
The really strange thing is that the new solar plant was built in the city of Whyalla, a port city located on the country’s south coast and known as the “steel city” because of its steel mills.
Situated at the end of a railway line which carries large quantities of iron ore mined inland from Australia to the coast, it certainly does not have a reputation for being a particularly ‘green’ town.
In recent decades, however, the dominant activity has increasingly been the export of iron ore, and this has given the city a new lease of life and a new economic boom.
The one created by Lumos Digital Mining in Whyalla is the first dedicated one solar powered mining center in South Australia.
Australia: new Bitcoin mining farm powered by solar energy
The private initiative also arouses the interest of local authorities, to the extent that the local trade and investment minister, Nick Championsaid the fact that the plant can operate using solar energy shows that Bitcoin mining can be environmentally friendly.
He stated:
“This is important to decarbonize the blockchain, which is a very energy-intensive industry.
I think it’s the beginning of a new economy out here in Whyalla.”
He also called for more similar facilities to start using renewable energy to mine cryptocurrencies, because while there is a demand for blockchain services, there is also a demand for zero emission blockchain services. This is why the South Australian minister believes there will be more and more facilities like this in the future.
In accordance Lumos Digital Miningwill the new mining farm create 30 jobs when it is fully operational, partly because the company has already planned to double the current size of the facility.
Lumos Digital Mining Angelo Kondylas says the plant could mine about 100 BTC per year, depending on the availability of electricity. There are approximately 16 blocks, as the total reward for those who can mine a block is currently 6.25 BTC, although in the spring of 2024 the reward will be halved due to halving.
Kondylas also says the company is willing to potentially sell the generated power to others who want to use it to mine cryptocurrencies.
Technical information about the Lumos Digital Mining facility
The plant is primarily solar-powered, but Kondylas revealed that on days when overall electricity production in Australia would be excessive, they can also draw power from the grid to extract at low cost.
In fact, according to Lumos Digital Mining’s representative, power generators in Australia risk having to use up to 10 million dollars to shut down production facilities on days when the grid draws too little electricity. The Lumos Digital Mining facility can then act as a sponge that absorbs excess electricity that is generated but not used, using it to mine BTC.
The latter is an extremely interesting point about Bitcoin mining.
Electricity production is not easy to modulate according to consumption, and unfortunately electricity cannot yet be stored on a large scale in an efficient and economical way.
This means that in periods where consumption drops rapidly and significantly, some of the power is simply wasted, resulting in large losses for the producers.
Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, does not need to keep consumption constant, so it can be modulated to e.g. increase it when there is excess power on the gridand reduce it when that surplus runs out.
In this way, power producers can limit losses when they are forced to spend money on producing electricity they cannot sell, greatly improving the economic efficiency of the process.
There are already several similar initiatives around the world, but not yet on a large scale. The Lumos Digital Mining initiative has a couple of advantages in this regard.
The new sustainable bitcoin mining farm in Australia
First, it is an autonomous mining farm that can mine independently of the availability of grid power. It actually produces with solar energy all the electricity it needs to survive. Only if there is excess electricity on the grid can it take it and monetize it by mining BTC, but it doesn’t have to.
The other advantage is that it is a complete sustainable mining farmwith no polluting emissions, not even CO2.
So on the one hand it is mining in a sustainable way, on the other hand it may also want to help Australian power companies sell all the electricity produced in access to a business that uses it to generate revenue by mining BTC.
Australia is a sunny area, where it may not be particularly difficult to replicate initiatives such as Lumos Digital Mining. Then again, the amount of renewable energy used globally by Bitcoin mining is growing steadily, which only points to the great path that needs to be taken to minimize the harmful emissions associated with this activity.
It is worth noting that the solar energy used by plants like this is not energy taken from the availability of the rest of society, because it is solar energy that would otherwise not be used by anyone. Thus, this is an initiative that does not seem to have any real drawbacks, so much so that it is even desirable that it be replicated globally in the future, and especially on a large scale.
There are a number of places in the world where there is huge availability of solar energy that is not used by anyone, but from which it is difficult to export locally produced electricity. If this can be combined with grid absorption of excess electricity produced, such a solution seems not only appropriate at least, but also potentially revolutionary, especially for the health and sustainability of the entire power generation industry.
