Biggest Mining Farms Ever: Switzerland, USA, Australia

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industrial mining

We’ve all heard about Bitcoin and how people would just mine it from home with their laptop or desktop, years ago when it all started. Everyone’s heard of the guy who bought a pizza for 23 Bitcoin, right? And not so long ago, makeshift “mining farms” started popping out from almost under the floorboards. It seems, people use basements & garages or even abandoned buildings. We’ve all thought about it.

This also is becoming less and less profitable, however, and growing popularity also raises several questions, mostly around power demands, efficiency, sustainability and scalability even to the point of putting pressure on manufacturers and raising the price of hardware and resources. 

What’s more, we see increased interest towards industrial-scale mining from investors, groups, cloud mining resellers. Numerous ICOs and whitepapers are now solely being designed around industrial-scale mining.

largest bitcoin mining farm

The Global Power required for Industrial Mining has grown 147 times in the Past Year

Just the other day I read about a group of Chinese crypto investors showing up at a hydropower plant in up-state New York and demanding to speak to the “super” so they could buy some power.

Many of these new industrial-scale mining ventures focus around renewable energy and mobility to tackle the increase in costs and difficulties, so naturally the global position is quite often important when it comes to setting up, as different countries or states differ in prices and resources.

Coinmint Website

Switzerland

One of the companies that is trying to make industrial mining more sustainable and ensure its long-term development is Swiss Alps Energy AG (SAE). SAE has been devising plans to deploy equipment in thousands of locations across the Alps, which would allow installing mining infrastructure on empty buildings, abandoned farms, etc.

Technology

The so-called Swiss Alps Mining (SAM) cube is a kind of flexible modular block which allows monitoring of performance, profit, etc. from a central platform, defines parameters and so on.

One of the key advantages of being so high up is that the boiling point of water rises with altitude, therefore cutting cooling costs, not to mention the low temperature outside which will provide natural cooling and safe the need for any additional systems.

Swiss Alps Mining Whitepaper

The Swiss are Known for Embracing Blockchain Technologies and Digital Assets

Another offering from the company is their innovative Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system, which, according to SAE: “will generate electricity from the waste heat of industrial processes and mining itself, factors which will allow a drastic reduction in energy consumption and improve mining profits”.

USA

There are ambitious plans of Coinmint – crypto mining company – to create one of the largest industrial-scale mining facility in the world.

The making of Coinmint Hydro Powered Industrial Mining Farm

According to their website, the company is developing the largest digital currency data center in the world in a former Alcoa Aluminum smelter in upstate New York. The facility can be scaled to support a data center three times larger than its closest competitor.

As far as the cost of power is the largest variable expense, Coinmint has a great advantage through the strongest management team with more than twenty years in the electricity trading industry.

The thing about this project is that they’re trying to build the “renewable energy grid of the future”, and they’re doing this by “making a $5 billion bet that, by making its power cleaner, it can become a magnet for the clean energy jobs market”.

Hydropower in New York

New York is the largest hydroelectric power producer east of the Rocky Mountains with more than 300 hydroelectric generating stations that connect to New York’s electric grid.

Conventional hydropower stations generate nearly nine-tenths of all the renewable energy produced in New York. The New York Power Authority (NYPA), a publicly owned company, owns the two biggest plants, the Niagara River and St. Lawrence Power Projects.

Energy Intelligence

One modern initiative is aiming to connect the distributed energy network with software intelligence. According to their website, Opus One Solutions will utilize a platform that gives utilities, owners of distributed energy resources (DERs), and other market participants visibility into the DNA of the electricity distribution grid in real-time, as operated – thereby unlocking new customer and utility business models and 100% penetration of DERs.

Australia

Australia Solar Powered Farm

It costs $9,913 in power to mine one Bitcoin in Australia which makes it unprofitable and creates a huge carbon footprint in the area.

Hadouken Pty Ltd is planning a massive 44.5-acre, 20-megawatt solar-powered Bitcoin and Crypto industrial-scale mining farm in rural town situated 213 kilometers (~ 132 miles) south of Perth. They are planning to house 69,000 solar panels and 5 inverters.

Going forwards, Australia will provide one of the first green power sources just for industrial mining as it currently has one of the most expensive electricity costs in the world.

Ben Tan, the owner of Hadouken Pty Ltd. also previously co-founded the Nasdaq-listed international solar power company, Vivopower International PLC.

The Southern Development Assessment Panel recommended approving the farm. Application for this approval indicated that the company intends to install a battery storage system positioned in ten shipping containers, with the solar facility set to be constructed within three to six months on an eighteen-hectare site.

Solar and Crypto Mining Offers Lifeline to Declining Coal Mining Town

The approval indicates enthusiasm for the project which states that “Approval and implementation of the proposal will also be a positive contribution towards establishing a greater presence of the renewable energy sector within the Shire of Collie.”

The solar farm is expected to create around  40-80 workplaces with just three part-time to be tasked with the maintenance of the facility in the future.

The main focus of industrial-scale mining today seems to be around renewable energy and finding the way to cut its costs, and it does make sense as any expenses saved are improving profit. And let’s face it, in today’s social environment nobody wants to contribute towards a global catastrophe, so companies innovating in the financial space also want to use the latest technology when it comes to power.

Good luck and happy mining!