Bitcoin mining company Greenidge Generation has announced that it will start operations in South Carolina in early 2022.
In an announcement on Friday, Greenidge said it will operate from a carbon-neutral cryptocurrency mining facility in the city of Spartanburg. The company said it signed a letter of intent for a 10-year lease with printing company LSC Communications’ suburban South Carolina location, where it plans to begin mining cryptocurrency “in the coming weeks,” in late 2021 or early 2022.
According to Greenidge, the site can generate 80 megawatts (MW) of electricity, two-thirds of which comes from carbon-free sources including nuclear power. Jeff Kirt, CEO of Greenidge, said it was a step forward for the company to create “green bitcoin mining” in the United States.
The company already owns a power plant to operate in New York, which is expected to expand to 85 MW by 2022. Despite Greenidge’s stated intentions to become a leader in “power generation operations,” the company said, as the Seneca Lake Guardian environmental group has stated, Greenidge is simply switching from using coal for its mining operations to using natural gas obtained from the combustion process.
While Greenidge travels to South Carolina to mine, many companies believed to be fleeing legal repression in China have turned to Texas to start operations there. Cryptocurrency mining company Blockware announced Thursday that it will expand operations in Kentucky, which has some of the lowest industrial energy costs in the United States.
Greenidge Generation began operating as a coal-fired power plant in 1937, approved by the New York State Gas and Electric Corporation (NYSEG). AES Corporation bought the facility in 1999 and operated it until 2011 when it found it too expensive to operate in its current configuration. At this point, AES had taken some turbines and boilers out of service.
Private equity funds funded and managed by Atlas Holdings LLC bought the facility from AES in 2014. Atlas and its subsidiaries, headquartered in Greenwich, CT, were founded in 2002 and own and operate manufacturing and distribution companies around the world.
Greenidge has begun the long process of converting electricity generation from coal to natural gas. Not only does this require new equipment and expertise, it also requires a number of permits and permits from state and federal governments. These final license, evaluation and approval applications take three years to complete.
In May 2017, the converted Greenidge Generation factory went into operation with year-round capacity.
Given the projected needs, and then the state’s power grid, Greenidge believes there could be additional opportunities to leverage the facility’s unique properties to strengthen the business and regional grid while creating a more valuable economic engine for our region. After Greenidge identified the host as this possibility in 2019, Greenidge successfully ran blockchain mining tests and began building data centers for blockchain services.
Leveraging strategic industry partnerships and the Yates County and area workforce, Greenidge was able to complete construction of this new facility from start to finish in less than four months. In January 2020, Greenidge finally started the first phase of a state-of-the-art data center for blockchain mining with flexible allocations for hosting customers and new investors. This new plant has an output of 22 megawatts (MW) in the initial phase and up to 106 MW after completion of all phases.
Greenidge Generation LLC operates a natural gas power plant near the shores of Lake Seneca that has grown into a bitcoin mining operation.
Greenidge’s parent company now boasts that it is the first on-board bitcoin mining operation to be publicly traded on the exchange, but as it grew, it has been scrutinized by regulators.
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