After being aggressively invited into the state, Bitcoin “miners” have applied to the Texas Energy Reliability Council (ERCOT) to use 33 GW of electric power over the next decade, an amount of power generation equal to 40% of the state’s current installed capacity of 85 GW, according to a report in Bloomberg News Aug. 29. A spokeswoman for ERCOT told Bloomberg that the state would be able to meet the demand, although it is half again higher than the state estimated for Bitcoin operations only in April. Texas is pushing big increases in wind power, its deregulated specialty, the failure of which during the February 2021 deep freeze cost 250 lives in the state. The push features a huge and hugely inefficient offshore wind farm in the Gulf off Houston, much larger than the city itself.
The sinister aspect of this development for Texas citizens, is that Bitcoin miners are ideal customers for Texas’ deregulated and windblown power grid (more wind power than any other state in absolute terms). The Bitcoin operators, Bloomberg notes, are themselves “intermittent.” They are “ready to devour excess wind and solar energy when it’s abundant, but also flexible enough to shut down when the grid is under strain"—for which shutdowns they will be paid handsomely by ERCOT. And the more intermittent wind power is added to the state’s isolated electricity grid, the more unstable that grid will become when demand rises rapidly in very cold or very hot weather.
