Japan’s Tepco experiments with renewable bitcoin mining
Image: Agile Energy X
Tepco subsidiary Tokyo based Agile Energy X is reported to be experimenting with the use of excess renewables for bitcoin mining.
The company, which was formed in 2022, is aiming to use renewable electricity that would otherwise be wasted.
Agile Energy X was established to create a scheme for using variable renewable energy that would otherwise be curtailed and introduce flexibility by powering distributed facilities such as computing systems and data centres.
In particular, the aim was to encourage local production and consumption of electricity.
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Distributed computing, and by extension bitcoin mining, enables such flexibility in demand with the starting and stopping of computation able to be freely controlled in the absence of direct customers.
In addition, such facilities are highly flexible in installation, requiring only simple ancillary facilities such as air conditioning for cooling.
The company describes its approach as a first-of-a-kind business model that enhances carbon neutrality by combining three schemes – promoting decarbonisation, developing unused clean energy and mitigating grid congestion.
Kenji Tateiwa, founder and CEO of Agile Energy X, who developed his career in the nuclear programme of Tepco, attributes the founding of Agile Energy X to his experience first hand of the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 with his dream to “create a perfect energy world”.
“Agile Energy X aspires to Transform (X) the energy industry in an agile manner.”
Quoted in Asahi Shimbun, Tateiwa said: “What we are doing has few parallels in Japan. Success of our framework would prompt more green energy to be introduced.”
The report states that Agile Energy X has installed bitcoin miners in two prefectures in Japan, where there is likely to be power in excess of demand.
It also reports Agile Energy X simulations suggest that 240,000GWh of power would be wasted annually if green energy were to be introduced to account for half of the total power supply, as it could not be realistically stored in batteries.
