Sustainable Bitcoin miner uses waste heat to dry wood

Norway is simply a bastion for renewable vigor absorption successful Europe. As overmuch arsenic 99% of Norway’s vigor derives from hydropower portion the grid often enjoys a greenish energy surplus. 

But for Norway’s largest information halfway and Bitcoin (BTC) miner, Kryptovault, utilizing regenerative hydropower to effort to lick valid Bitcoin blocks was not enough.

At the Hønefoss Bitcoin mining operation, which employees person aptly named “the Cathedral” owed to its immense and cavernous expanse, the blistery aerial generated by Bitcoin mining rigs is recycled and utilized to adust retired chopped logs.

Kjetil Hove Pettersen, CEO of Kryptovault, told Cointelegraph that Norway is an “ideal determination for mining” and that alongside the log-drying operation, seaweed drying operations volition footwear disconnected successful the archetypal fractional of 2022.

According to Pettersen, Norway has a batch of "trapped" energy, pointing retired to a overmuch higher accumulation compared to depletion arsenic good arsenic a constricted capableness to transportation the excess energy:

It would look that the withdrawal of energy subsidies from Bitcoin mining farms successful 2018 has not affected the Scandinavian country’s presumption arsenic a sought-after destination to excavation cryptocurrency.

The Guardian newspaper, which typically asserts Bitcoin mining energy-FUD, flipped the communicative portion reporting connected Kryptovault’s operation. Their article considered “can Bitcoin beryllium sustainable?”

Svein Bjerke, General Manager astatine the timber institution that receives the adust logs, answers that question. In a video, Bjerke says that drying wood with discarded vigor from Bitcoin mining is the “most environmentally affable mode to bash this.”

Moreover, the secondary benefits of Bitcoin mining subdivision retired to much than the environment. Over time, Hønefoss grid customers are really amended disconnected owed to the presence of Kryptovault’s energy-hungry process.

Grid fees–like trees–are hacked down twelvemonth aft twelvemonth due to the fact that the section area’s full vigor depletion increases. The much vigor is used, the much prices travel down implicit the agelong term. The institution estimates that circa 2 cardinal Euros is saved owed to “Kryptovault’s beingness successful our grid.”

Nonetheless, the way to mining 100% greenish and renewable Bitcoin has not been easy. Numerous challenges look miners successful Norway, including:

“Project and engineering perspectives to fiscal challenges, involving banks, taxation and regulatory compliance. Just the measurement of mounting up a slope relationship erstwhile moving successful this manufacture tin beryllium a ample situation today.”

Related: EU securities regulator calls for proof-of-work crypto mining ban

Unphased, these hiccoughs are improbable to hinder Kryptovault’s imaginativeness to alteration cleanable vigor into Satoshis. Pettersen says helium “can’t deliberation of immoderate amended concern use-cases than what we are doing.”

When asked by Cointelegraph if Kryptovault would see mining different cryptocurrencies successful the future, Pettersen jokes, “for us, Bitcoin is the sanction of the game.”