Topic: [2016-01-25]World Editorial Board | PUD rates and the Bitcoin effect (Read 288 times)

The people of Chelan County are asked to accept the risk. Their power rates may rise, perhaps substantially. The electricity their dams generate will not be sold to provide rate-reducing revenue or visible economic growth, but to power unseen ephemeral businesses with banks of computers, producing wealth for someone they do not know, in forms they do not understand. The financial plans and projections of their public utility will be shredded. The future will be clouded, uncertain, filled with unknown consequences.

The commissioners of the Chelan County PUD have done the right thing — step back, call a pause, and consider policies in the best interest of their ratepayers and the county economy. The businesses in focus are so-called Bitcoin miners, who set up power-hungry data centers in leased space and set their servers to work automatically digging for cyber wealth. Bitcoin is an arbitrary, unbacked, independent, and questionable digital currency, and the miners somehow compete with other miners around the world for Bitcoin transactions. We do not understand how this works, or how long it will work. We need not make a value judgment on these new businesses. The point is that the sudden arrival of Bitcoin miners, lured by our cheap and plentiful electricity, could consume a very large share of the surplus power now sold to keep Chelan County’s rates low. In a matter of months the PUD had inquiries for 220 megawatts of power, when the entire county now uses only 180 megawatts. A Bitcoin miner can use as much power as 1,500 homes.

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