This is so dumb. But it gives some insight into the metrics.

If we back into it, 116,000 Th/s will get us 1BTC/day.

Let's assume Antminer S9s. Those give us 13 Th/s and take 1.3kW ea. Hey that's convenient, we're at 1tH/s per kWh.

1186 BTC in one year is 3.25 BTC/day. That's 377,000 Th/S which, conveniently, is 377MW/h, or 15.7 MW of capacity. Call it 16MW.

Again, I'm going to invite WanderingEng to look at me because it's nice having a power engineer to tell you you're full of shit... but I've helped spec 20MW standby power generation and... I mean...

A CAT 3516 is 2MW. 8 CAT 3516s is 16MW. Ballpark it at 120gal/hr. Number 2 diesel is $1.91 in bulk - call it 2ish bucks. I'm burning $1900/hr cranking out 16MW, or 12 cents per kWH (assuming the generators were free and never break).

We're not doing diesel, though, we're doing natural gas, which is going to be 200k BTU per hour per 2MW. Electric price is $3 bucks or so, industrial price, per thousand BTU. So I think I'm looking at $533/hr in gas, or 3.3 cents per kWh.

But that's because they get to buy it as an industrial power production facility, not a commercial facility.

Here's the plant. They've got 14MW making 5.5 BTC per day, as it turns out. It's got a capacity of 100MW. Considering it was "once abandoned" it seems to me that if the local communities stopped buying power from them, they cease to be a utility.

Which would more than double their gas prices.

And raise their costs of operation above that of a wind farm.

Dunno, man. This looks like regulatory arbitrage to me. Get rid of the arbitrage, get rid of the bitcoin miners.