With Kazakhstan facing power diminutions caused by an increase in cryptocurrency mining operations within the country, Kazakhstan is now looking to Russia, its neighbor to provide additional power capacity, RT reports.
Recently, the Director of the Electricity Development Department of Kazakhstan, Aidos Daribayev said that the state-owned energy firm Samruk-Energo began negotiations with Russian Energy giant Inter RAO to establish a joint partnership.
Aidos Daribayev further noted that the consumption of energy in the country increased by 8% during the first 10 months of the year 2021, While in previous years the growth rate was between 1 to 2% per year.
As per the state, this power outage is due to the rapid increase in the mining of cryptocurrency caused by China’s decision to prohibit all kinds of mining and crypto activities. In the wake of the law change in China, BTC mining equipment was shifted by mining companies to different countries like Kazakhstan.
In 2021, the electricity use in Kazakhstan reached 82.99 billion kWh. The Kazakhstan Energy Ministry attributed this high consumption to Bitcoin mining data centers in the country.
According to the ministry, about 50 data centers focused on the production of cryptocurrencies are located in Kazakhstan. Their load is 693.3 MW, and the total permitted capacity according to technical conditions is 972.3 MW.
Data centers use 5 MWh, and one such facility accounts for 3.6 million kWh per month, which is proportional to the consumption of about 24,000 apartments, the Ministry of Energy noted.
According to the ministry’s calculations, in order to provide mining farms with sufficient electricity, it is necessary to build additional energy sources of at least 1000 MW.
In early October, the Ministry of Energy presented a draft order limiting the power consumption of one mining farm to 1 MW, and the total capacity of farms in the country to 100 MW.
Following an absolute ban by China on all sorts of crypto, Kazakhstan became the second-largest crypto-miner in the world following the US.
Deputy energy minister of Kazakhstan, Murat Zhurebekov, said the surplus power of Russia will aid Kazakhstan to deal with the challenges.
Earlier this year, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev approved a bill to restrict Bitcoin miners to pay extra charges for their electricity. The overcharge of 1 Kazakhstani tenge ($0.0025) per kilowatt-hour will be appended to all crypto mining processes.
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