Texas miners returned enough energy to power 1.5M houses

It was made possible by the state authorities' ancillary services and the adaptability of mining operations. President of the Texas Blockchain Council, Lee Bratcher, claimed that miners contributed up to 1,500 megawatts to the Texas grid in his comment to the Satoshi Action Fund. According to calculations from the Bitcoin advocacy group, this energy would be sufficient to heat,

"over 1.5 million small homes or keep 300 large hospitals fully operational."

Although the precise period in which miners accumulated this much power is unknown, on December 24 and 25, 2022, the hashrate of Bitcoin decreased by 30% globally. The state's ancillary services, which encourage customers to cut back on consumption during periods of peak demand to stabilize the grid, seemed to have miners as their ideal clients. Because of the severe winter storm in North America, Binance's cloud mining services were unavailable from December 24 to December 26.

A “bomb cyclone” unleashed extreme temperatures in the days before Christmas, rendering millions of Americans without electricity and taking dozens of lives. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) established a temporary procedure in March 2022 to ensure that new large loads, like Bitcoin miners, can be connected to the ERCOT grid. To ensure miners have the equipment necessary to enable grid balancing properly, software providers have also started collaborating with them.

Texas, along with New York (19.9%), Kentucky (18.7%), and Georgia (17.3%), are among the top states in the United States for Bitcoin mining, each accounting for 14% of the total hashrate.