Japan’s Tepco to power crypto mining with surplus renewable energy

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), its subsidiary Agile Energy X and computing technology provider Triple-1 are partnering to promote data centre developments in Japan.

The so-called ‘Megawatt To Megahash’ (MW2MH) project envisages the development of distributed data centres, including crypto mining facilities, across the country that can absorb the surplus renewable energies that would otherwise lead to congestion on the grid and the curtailment of supply.

Commonly on days of good weather the solar generation can exceed the demand and the need for the curtailment of renewable energies has been rising nationwide in recent years, while also it has become difficult to interconnect renewable energy in some places due to grid congestion.

Indeed, the energy ministry has estimated that Japan could generate up to twice the current output from renewables.

Have you read?
Crypto mining and data centres – the green challenge
Why heating and cooling is the missing piece of Europe’s energy transition

Agile Energy X was launched by Tepco in October to lead the development of the MW2MH concept of the conversion of electricity (i.e. the megawatt) into digital value (i.e. the megahash).

The concept is aimed primarily for cryptocurrency mining but also for the other data centre requirements that are envisaged for advancing smart cities, autonomous vehicles, the metaverse and other future data driven developments in Japan.

With the principle of “local production for local consumption”, Agile Energy X will offer containerised computing solutions to drive a decentralised data centre development, which is considered crucial for Japan as a country with a high frequency of natural disasters.

The opportunity also arises for coupling them for the next generation distributed computing – a growing business globally – for complex problem solving.

Triple-1 is supporting the project with the supply of its energy efficient Kamikaze IT semiconductors.

To demonstrate the concept the companies have set up a 1,300 computing system based data centre at Tepco Power Grid’s business premises in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Tests to investigate the system behaviour and the impact on the power grid when the facility is operated with a large amount of power, up to 1.5MW, are under way with initial results indicating that the facility can operate without disruption.

Agile Energy X envisages its future distributed data centres to average 100MW in scale.