Iceland Disconnects Power To New Bitcoin Miners

From December 7, no new requests for power from Bitcoin mining operations will get accepted from Iceland’s energy utility service.

Landsvirkjun, the National Iceland electrical company, has now cut the amount of power it will offer for some sectors, including Bitcoin miners and aluminum smelters. One representative from the island’s power utility reported that it has been forced to reduce energy allocations to southwestern Bitcoin miners.

It was also urged to reduce allocation to different industrial facilities due to a series of issues. Some of the challenges that resulted in this decision include low hydro-reservoir levels, a problem at a power station, and accessing energy from an external supplier.

Various mining operations have long been attracted to the nation since it has a lot of geothermal energy that gets harvested to create cheap and lots of renewable energy supply. However, from December 7 until an unknown period, any new requests for electricity from mining activities will get rejected, as explained by the National Iceland electrical firm.

Canada’s Genesis Mining, Hive Blockchain Technologies, and Bitfury Holding are the three primary Bitcoin mining firms that have opened their facilities in Iceland. For almost ten years, miners have tried to realize the promise of setting up environmentally-friendly Bitcoin mining facilities in Iceland.

Iceland Is Perfect For Bitcoin Miners

In that context, Cloud Hashing moved 100 miners to Iceland in 2013. Austrian company HydroMiner GmbH raised nearly $2.8 million in November 2017 during its initial coin offering (ICO) to set up mining rigs directly at various Icelandic power plants. Below 1% of the nation’s electricity is generated from non-renewable sources.

The nation’s aluminum smelting sector has been hit the hardest by many incidents of distribution failure. Aluminium prices surged by 1.1% on December 7 to indicate the bottleneck in supply that is created by a recent spike in demand and the current power supply crunch.

Throughout the world, green blockchain initiatives have come into view in 2021. COP26 conference enabled leaders in Glasgow, Scotland to address energy-intensive Bitcoin mining operations. That conference saw the unveiling of the GloCha United Citizens Organization (UCO) for action on Climate Empowerment. It is designed to use blockchain technology to boost and advance climate change objectives.