CleanSpark is adding 200 megawatts of renewable power to its bitcoin mining operations in West Texas over the next year through an agreement signed with energy technology company Lancium as the miner seeks to increase its current hashrate capacity five-fold.
The bitcoin mining company said in a statement sent to Bitcoin Magazine that it expects the first 50 MW of the purchased capacity to be operational by the end of 2022, while the remaining 150 MW should be up and running during Spring 2023. The agreement also provisions an option to add an extra 300 MW of energy in the future.
CleanSpark said Houston-based Lancium’s power, located in regions with access to low-cost renewable energy, might enable it to add an estimated 16 exahash per second (EH/s) to the firm’s hashrate capacity once used in full to feed the miner’s ASICs.
“We continue to build more capacity at our own bitcoin mining facilities while we partner with colocation service providers,” said Zach Bradford, CEO of CleanSpark, in a statement. “This hybrid approach helps us ensure that we always have rackspace ready to deploy new machines when they are delivered to us by the manufacturers.”
Lancium is dedicated to accelerating the energy transition with what it calls “Clean Campuses” that act as controllable load resources (CLR) for enhanced power grid reliability whilst encouraging the growth of renewable energy. The firm’s first Clean Campus was announced last year.
“Our Clean Campuses provide a unique solution that will provide both green and low cost power for customers that are interruptible and use large amounts of power,” said Michael McNamara, CEO and co-founder of Lancium, in a statement.
CleanSpark, a Nasdaq-listed company, mined 276 BTC in February – a month it reached a daily production peak of 10.15 BTC. The miner announced in December that it had purchased the necessary infrastructure to immersion cool its 20 MW Norcross, Georgia bitcoin mining operations, a move it said at the time could result in a 20% increase in mining efficiency.