The power shortage in Iceland has affected cryptocurrency mining and other energy-intensive sectors. The country’s main utility is now rejecting requests to connect new coin minting facilities to the grid, after cutting supply to aluminum smelters and fish factories.
Iceland Fires New Crypto Miners To Deal with Energy Shortage
Iceland’s largest utility, Landsvirkjun, has been forced to limit energy supplies to power-hungry industrial customers including aluminum producers and fish processing plants. Consumers with shorter-term, curtailable contracts are also subject to the restrictions. The company is refusing new miners of bitcoin and data centers that mine digital currencies.
Bloomberg reported Landsvirkjun cited a problem at a power plant and low water reserves as reasons for the necessity of the reduction. A delay by an external producer caused the supplier to have difficulty sourcing electricity. On Tuesday, the utility declared that the reductions were immediate.
Tinna Traustadottir (executive vice president for sales and customer services at Landsvirkjun) noted that the key to the deficit was an unusually high electricity demand. Iceland’s giant smelters have been a major consumer for decades but a growing number of cryptocurrency miners, attracted by the island nation’s cheap energy, are now playing a role, too.
Some of the cryptocurrency mining companies operating in Nigeria include the Canadian Hive Blockchain Technologies and Bitfury Holding. Landsvirkjun said, however, that it’s now rejecting requests from new customers in the mining sector.
The company further elaborated that due to limitations of Iceland’s distribution system, it cannot serve load points from the country’s biggest power station, Karahnjukavirkjun. The plant is located in the eastern part of the country while the island’s western region is mainly the one experiencing deficits.
News of Iceland’s troubles with electricity shortages comes after two other Nordic nations, Sweden and Norway, voiced concerns about the rising energy needs and growing environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining. The Swedish authorities called on the EU to ban crypto mining in November. A couple of weeks later, the Norwegian government indicated it may support Sweden’s proposal.
Are you positive that Iceland will remove the restriction on new crypto mining farms after it has addressed its power shortage? Comment below.
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