New York Power Companies Can Now Raise Rates for Bitcoin Miners

The state of New York may be a difficult place to set up a mining venture in the region as lawmakers have ruled that power companies can raise their electricity rates if miners choose to use the state’s hydropower.The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) has decided to allow municipal electricity providers the ability to raise rates for bitcoin miners and data centers. The reason NY officials chose to let power companies raise electric rates is because 36 municipal power suppliers petitioned the PSC committee. The power companies believe that when data centers and cryptocurrency miners take advantage of the cheap hydropower in the state, average customers lose out.
According to the power companies, several of them have seen an increase in requests from commercial customers seeking large amounts of power. “These requests come mainly from similar types of potential customers: server farms, generally devoted to data processing for cryptocurrencies,” explains the filing.

The ruling goes on to state: “Cryptocurrency entities, such as Bitcoin developers, use massive banks of computers to run a complex software program that will create, or “mine”, digital currency — As some of these customers have come online, it has become clear that the type of electricity load demand was of a different character than load characteristics typically seen by NYMPA members.”