Just a small handful of crypto miners in Kazakhstan are causing quite the fuss, with reports that the country's electrical grid operator, KEGOC, would begin rationing electricity for 50 registered crypto miners in the country.
This is after the demand for electricity by these miners caused an emergency shutdown mode at 3 separate power plants across Kazakhstan in October 2021. From now on, those crypto mining farms will be the first ones that will lose their electricity if there are any issues with the electricity grid in Kazakhstan.
The Kazakhstan energy ministry has estimated that electricity demand has increased 8% in 2021 alone, which is a sharp increase over the annual 1-2% that electricity demand normally increases every year. The price of electricity in Kazakhstan is very cheap, which makes it a lucrative spot for crypto mining farms to set up operation to mine away for those precious Bitcoins.
Kazakhstan is now playing a balancing act with the power shortages, where the country has asked a Russian energy country to help out with its national power grid. In return, it could charge registered crypto miners a compensation fee of 1 tenge (around $0.00023) for every kilowatt-hour starting in 2022.
This means crypto miners will have a choice between scaling back their crypto mining operations, or moving their equipment out of the country and somewhere equally; or maybe even cheaper.
