Iceland will limit access to electricity to new mining companies – Bits Media

The national Icelandic electricity company Landsvirkjun announced the suspension of connections of new miners to energy sources for an indefinite period of time.

As reported by Bloomberg, citing a statement by Vice President Landsvirkhun (Landsvirkjun) Tinny Traustadottir (Tinna Traustadottir), This decision was caused by a number of problems with electricity supplies.

According to her, it's a coincidence of several factors, such as low water levels in hydroelectric reservoirs in southwest Iceland, delays in energy supplies from an external supplier and a breakdown at one of the power plants. Increased demand for energy also had an impact.

At the same time, there are no plans to disable already working miners. In addition to denying new miners connection, the energy company will reduce energy supplies to industrial enterprises - metallurgical companies and other large energy consumers.

Iceland has always been attractive to miners due to significant energy generation from geothermal sources. Large mining companies Hive Blockchain operate in the country, Genesis Mining и Bitfury. However, the current situation has shown, that the national energy system is not prepared for this range of electricity generation problems.

This is also related to, that Landsvirkjun cannot quickly increase energy generation - in Iceland more 99% electricity comes from renewable sources, and it takes a long time to start up geothermal generators or hydroelectric power plants.

Note, that mining companies face restrictions in other countries. So, the influx of miners into Kazakhstan has led to a shortage of electricity, therefore, miners are trying to export some of their equipment to Russia and the USA. There are fears, that the US state of Texas will also face power shortages.