What is common in mining, Georgia and Irkutsk?

We all still know from school that the “green” energy is that extracted from renewable sources. Of course, endless solar panels and a forest of windmills, which rotate menacingly with giant blades, immediately come to mind. But one of the most common types of relatively “green” energy in the post-Soviet space is hydroelectric power plants. True, if one repeats the word of hydropower station often enough, one can hear the composition of the group “Krovostok” , as an ecologist cries somewhere, who claims that the stations violate the fish spawning routes and impede its migration, and the pouring areas when organizing a reservoir for lowland projects lead to local ecological disaster. But against the background of the plans of the Soviet atheists of engineers to reverse the rivers, the relatively harmless "flood meadows" of hydroelectric power stations are not so terrible.


Photo: Lucas Jackson / Reuters - the first picture in the issue of Google on the request "mining Georgia Irkutsk"

And now some interesting statistics. World mining capacities are distributed by regions as follows:

1. China - 60%.
2. North America - 18%.
3. Georgia - 6%.

The data is averaged, because the miners are like fantomas, hidden and elusive. But if you estimate that these numbers are true, then Georgia suddenly became a leader. How is that?

Georgia and mining

To begin with, this hospitable mountainous state inherited twenty (!) Hydroelectric power stations from the USSR. One more - Daryal hydroelectric power station, the Georgians, by the way, built independently and put into operation several years ago. Almost all these hydropower plants are relatively low-power - annual generation is, on average, 120-400 million kWh. However, the Inguri Hydroelectric Power Plant, whose design capacity is 130 MW or 4430 million kWh, stands out against this background.



At the same time, according to data for 2016, the population of Georgia is about 3.7 million people.

Many hydropower plants of this state were laid down before the beginning of the 1960s (some began to be built in 1927 as part of the local industrial revolution in the USSR, if you can call it that period). The idea was simple: Georgia was supposed to be the energy hub of the region. After the collapse of the Soviet state, Georgians suddenly discovered that they have a positive energy balance. If workers and peasants: they now produce much more electricity than they consume. So, 1 kW when consuming more than 301 kW per month for the population costs about 0.23 GEL, i.e. less than 1 ruble per kW. In Russia, this figure is about 4 rubles per 1 kW.

Due to the excess of electricity and, accordingly, low tariffs, Georgia has become an attractive platform for miners. In the past few years, the community has seen a trend towards the use of renewable sources, as farms consume a monstrous amount of electricity, so caravans from mining farms reached into this mountainous state.

And now Irkutsk

It is not surprising, but the situation in Irkutsk is extremely similar to the situation in Georgia. Only instead of 21 hydroelectric power plants across the country, there is one, but extremely large. The Irkutsk Hydroelectric Power Station is located on the Angara River and was built under the same Soviet Union. The commissioning of the units took place in 1958 and since then the station has successfully produced electricity. The total output of this hydroelectric station is slightly lower than that of the Inguri - 4,100 million kWh per year.



But above, we said that in Russia a kilowatt costs about 4 rubles, what is the catch? The bottom line is that the Irkutsk Hydroelectric Power Station sells its electricity at 1 ruble per kilowatt, which is comparable to the previously mentioned Georgian tariffs. In addition, since the Angara River is a flat river, locating farms next to a hydroelectric power station is much easier than in the Georgian scenario.

And miners reached out for cheap electricity to the bank of the Angara. It comes to the fact that the construction of mining farms in the Irkutsk region is already carried out ICO, the dividends from the tokens of which will be paid based on the number of names of the farm in the future.

Supported the HYIP around Irkutsk and the federal media, which spread a number of reports that miners recycle heat from farms through the heating of living rooms of residents of the region. The fact that Irkutsk has become the capital of Russian mining is confirmed by the fact that the largest global ASIC manufacturer, the Chinese company Bitmain, decided to open its own service center in the city to service the equipment. It is located at st. Rokitnaya 12, office 103. This put the Siberian city on a par with Hong Kong and California, where Bitmain also has its service centers.


If you are not ready to move to Irkutsk, and you want to mine, then you should look at us

Total

It would not be nice to mine in China, right next to the factories for the production of ASIC of the same Bitmain, the community continues to look for new sites. HPP is a great alternative. Tariffs for this electricity do not depend so much on jumps in energy prices, such as coal or fuel oil produced from oil. Plus, renewable sources also mean that environmentalists will stop shouting that miners uselessly burn kilotons of coal and oil for their “coins”.

Will new locations appear in the company of Georgia and Irkutsk? Unlikely. All more or less sensible places where it was economically advantageous to install hydroelectric power plants were already mastered in the 20th century. But it is likely that in the future, mining will reach such a level of capitalization that it will be easier and cheaper for miners to build their own power plants somewhere in an open field, and at the same time be the only consumers of their electricity. In the meantime, the entire segment is dependent on existing power grids, which are not always ready for the emergence of such voracious consumers.