Key Takeaways
- The Kazakhstan Energy Ministry announced that three of their power plants are currently not functioning well.
- The ministry is planning to restrict the energy consumption of the miners in the Country.
- The Country is responsible for about 18.1% of the entire monthly BTC hash rate as per Cambridge University data.
The nation's energy ministry has warned that three of its power facilities are now facing problems.
According to Plus World, the government has proposed a regulation that restricts the total electricity used by miners in the country to 100 MW.
If the proposed legislation is passed, it would mostly impact industrial miners. If passed, it would also restrict individual miners to a maximum power use of 1 MW.
The country will also charge miners an additional 0.0024 dollars every kilowatt of electricity consumed.
According to Cambridge University research, Kazakhstan accounts for around 18.1% of the monthly BTC hash rate.
However, the increasing number of local miners and the influx of Chinese miners seems to have overloaded the country's electrical system.
Also, in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), bitcoin mining has caused a power outage, causing months of societal instability. The miners are also blamed for electricity shortages in the Russian Zone.
The Ministry of Energy revealed that a 500MW big power unit at its Ekibastuz GRES-1 and Ekibastuz GRES-2 facilities has been disrupted due to a Broiler problem at the EEC JSC.
The news announcement did not name cryptocurrency mining as the cause of the issue, but the timing of the new regulation implies a connection.
The ministry also said that the main and branch power grid companies have taken steps to reduce the quantity of energy utilized by consumers who exceeded the program's limits.
Plus World stated that miners are increasingly using domestic electricity to mine cryptocurrencies, causing power shortages at certain times.
Alan Dordzhiev, the country's Association of Blockchain and Data Centers, emphasized that reducing power use is not the wisest measure. Still, he said he understood the government's stance. He believes the government should next halt the grey miners and ensure that only legitimate miners are utilizing the electricity.
Could Kazakhstan's growing mining-related electricity crisis lead to a moratorium on new mining operations?
