Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain was handsomely rewarded by the state for pausing operations during a heatwave last month. The company cut its Bitcoin mining operations by nearly 28% upon receiving the request from the state.

The heatwave in July had caused an increase in demand for power. As per reports, the bitcoin miner cut its power consumption by 11,717 megawatt hours. The amount of Energy saved is enough to power approximately 13,121 average homes for a month.

Riot’s Bitcoin Mining

Riot Blockchain earned nearly $9.5 million in energy credit and other benefits for acquiescing to the state’s request. It earned almost 439 Bitcoin, based on Bitcoin’s July value of approximately $21,500.

Last Month, the bitcoin miner’s output was significantly reduced as it operated at a reduced capacity. Bitcoin mining by the company for July was at 318 tokens whereas the company mined 443 token during the same period last year.

The payout for the bitcoin miner comes in accordance with a state rewards program that is given to miners in Texas when they give energy back to the grid during crunch time. When the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called on individuals and organizations to preserve power, almost every industrial-scale miner honored the request. In all, miners helped restore over 1,000 megawatts back to the grid.

Speaking about the bitcoin miner’s decision to give power back to the grid, CEO Jason Les stated, “As energy demand in ERCOT reached all-time highs this past month, the company voluntarily curtailed its energy consumption in order to ensure that more power would be available in Texas. Riot Blockchain has consistently and proactively pursued low-cost, large-scale access to power under its long-term fixed-rate power contracts, providing it with a unique ability to support ERCOT and release capacity back into the grid when power demand in Texas is high.”

Other than reducing energy consumption in July, the company also took other measures to reduce costs. Riot reportedly relocated miners hosted on Coinmint to its Whinstone Facility in Rockdale, Texas. Due to this move, around 2,416 bitcoin miners were offline. The decision also enabled Riot to save on third-party hosting fees. Other than the reward conferred by the state, Riot also sold 275 Bitcoins in July. The sale helped generate $5.6 million for the crypto company. The miner currently has 6,696 self-mined BTC.

Riot has a “deployed fleet” of 40,311 miners with a hash-rate capability of 4.2 exahash per second—nearly 2% of Bitcoin’s whole hash charge. However, Riot’s shares have plummeted over 65% this year.

Texas Energy Demands & Costs

The widespread heatwaves resulted in many miners cutting back its operations to meet growing energy demands. Several companies halted operations to lend a helping demand. Reports state that other Texas-based crypto miners, including Core Scientific and Argo Blockchain, also reduced operations to help the state’s energy grid.

In early July, it was revealed that Riot had started relocating its miners from New York to Texas to reduce energy costs. As electricity demand surges during the summer, Riot had started moving its miners in a bid to cut energy costs by half. The average electricity price in Texas is about 13 cents per kWh, while in the Northeast region it is nearly 25 cents/kWh. The company had also revealed plans to build a powerhouse in April, which is expected to be operational by 2023. The installation, once completed, would be capable of providing up to 1.7 gigawatts of energy and meets the energy demands of nearly two million people. At the time, Les had commented that the facility will help miners work better while contributing to the company’s ambition of becoming one of the largest bitcoin mining entities in the world.

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