Russian Regions Struggle To Keep Up With BTC Mining Energy Demands

A few Russian regions struggle to keep up with Bitcoin mining energy demands and now a local energy distributor is working to recover $800,000 from illicit miners as we are reading more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

As crypto-mining activity grows common in Russia, certain Russian regions struggle to keep up with the mining energy demands amid the massive inflows of new mining operations. Russia’s Irkutsk Oblast, the federal region and major center of trader routes from china, experienced a huge increase in energy consumption in 2021 due to mining activities. Yevgeny Vechkanov who is the head of technology and development at the energy firm Irkuts Electric Networks linked the growth of mining operations to the major rally in 2021 as well as China’s crypto ban enforced in September:

“These factors exacerbated the situation, triggering energy use quadrupling compared to 2020.”

Vechkanov added that the local people were installing mining farms at home which triggered increased energy consumption and frequent power grid outages. The director of Baikal Energy Company Oleg Prichko attributed the power consumption surge to popular local mining operations and claimed that as many as seven aircrafts fully loaded with mining devices from China arrived in Irkutsk during the first two weeks in January. The head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Andy Zhbanov said that Irkutsk residents set up mining farms in dog houses:

“Laugh all you want, but it’s warm for the dogs. Mining causes a lot of heat, which creates double benefits.”

The latest reprots came after authorities first reported on a sharp energy use spike in 2021 linking the increase in the huge growth of mining operations due to the exodus of miners from China. The Russian Energy Ministry announced that it was working on new regulatory framework tariffs between general usage and mining in late 2021. Irkutskenerogosbyt a huge local power distributor filed a total of 137 lawsuits against customers using subsidized electricity to mint crypto in mining facilities set up in homes and basements. The company expects to recover 63 million Russian rubles in damages.

The news came right after Russian president Vladimir Putin that Russia’s surplus of electricity provides a huge advantage to the country in mining and the Russian State Duma created a new working group to work on regulations that are designed for the mining sector.

Source: https://www.dcforecasts.com/bitcoin-news/russian-regions-struggle-to-keep-up-with-btc-mining-energy-demands/