May 30, 2018 at 13:53What do mining, Georgia and Irkutsk have in common?
We all know from school that “green” energy is that which is extracted from renewable sources. Of course, endless solar panels and a forest of windmills immediately come to mind, which are menacingly rotated by giant blades. But one of the most common types of relatively "green" energy in the post-Soviet space is the hydroelectric power station. True, if you repeat the word HPP quite often, you can hear the composition of the Krovostok group , as an ecologist shouts somewhere, who claims that the stations violate the spawning routes of fish and impede its migration, and flood areas when organizing a reservoir for flat projects lead to local environmental disaster. But against the background of the plans of the Soviet atheistsengineers to reverse the river, the relatively harmless "flood meadows" of the hydroelectric power station are not so scary.
Photo: Lucas Jackson / Reuters - the first picture in Google’s search query for “mining Georgia Irkutsk”
And now some interesting statistics. World mining capacities are distributed by region as follows:
The data is averaged because miners are like phantoms, hiding and elusive. But if you estimate that these figures are true, then Georgia suddenly became a leader. How's that?
To begin with, this hospitable mountainous state inherited twenty (!) Hydroelectric power stations from the USSR. Another - Daryal hydroelectric station, the Georgians, by the way, built independently and put into operation several years ago. Almost all of these hydroelectric power stations are relatively low-power - the annual generation is, on average, 120-400 million kWh. However, the Inguri hydroelectric power station stands out against this background, with an estimated capacity of 130 MW or 4,430 million kWh.
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 before the beginning of the 1960s (some began to be built as far back as 1927 as part of the local industrial revolution in the USSR, if that may be called this period). The idea was simple: Georgia was to become the region’s energy hub. After the collapse of the Soviet state, Georgians suddenly found that they had a positive energy balance. If the workers and peasants: now they produce much more electricity than they consume. So 1 kW with a consumption of 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.
Excess electricity and, accordingly, low tariffs, became the reasons for the interest of miners from Russia, figuring out whether a passport to Abkhazia is needed. In the past few years, a trend has been observed in the community towards the use of renewable sources, since farms consume a monstrous amount of electricity, and therefore caravans from mining farms pulled into this mountainous state.
It is not surprising, but the situation in Irkutsk is very similar to the situation in Georgia. Only instead of 21 hydropower plants across the country, there is one, but an extremely large one. The Irkutsk Hydroelectric Power Station is located on the Hangar and was built under the same Soviet Union. The units were put into operation in 1958 and since then the station has been successfully generating electricity. The total generation of this hydroelectric power station is slightly lower than that of the Ingurskaya hydroelectric station - 4,100 million kWh per year.
But above we said that in Russia a kilowatt costs about 4 rubles, what's the catch? The bottom line is that the Irkutsk hydroelectric station sells its electricity at 1 ruble per kilowatt, which is comparable to the previously mentioned Georgian tariffs. In addition, since the Angara is a flat river, it is much easier to place farms near a hydroelectric power station than in the Georgian scenario.
And the miners reached for cheap electricity to the shore of the Angara. It comes to the point that ICOs are already being held for the construction of mining farms in the Irkutsk region, dividends from tokens of which will be paid on the basis of the amount mined by the farm in the future.
The hype around Irkutsk was also supported by the federal media, which sprang up in a series of reports that miners utilize heat from farms by heating residential premises in the region. Confirmation that Irkutsk has become the capital of Russian mining is that the world's largest producer of ASIC, the Chinese company Bitmain, decidedopen in the city its own service center for equipment maintenance. It is located at ul. Rakitnaya 12, office 103. This put the Siberian city on a par with Hong Kong and California, where Bitmain also has its own service centers. If you are not ready to move to Irkutsk, and you want to mine, then you should look to us
No matter how nice it is to mine in China, right next to Bitmain’s ASIC factories, the community continues to search for new sites. HPPs are a great alternative. Tariffs for this electricity do not depend so much on surges in energy prices, such as coal or fuel oil produced from oil. The advantage of renewable sources is that environmentalists will stop shouting that miners uselessly burn kilotons of coal and oil for their “coins”.
Will there be new locations in the companies of Georgia and Irkutsk? Unlikely. All more or less sensible places where it was economically feasible to install hydroelectric power stations 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 the open field, and be the only consumers of their electricity. In the meantime, the entire segment is dependent on existing energy networks, which are not always ready for the appearance of such voracious consumers.
Photo: Lucas Jackson / Reuters - the first picture in Google’s search query for “mining Georgia Irkutsk”
And now some interesting statistics. World mining capacities are distributed by region as follows:
- China - 60%.
- North America - 18%.
- Georgia - 6%.
The data is averaged because miners are like phantoms, hiding and elusive. But if you estimate that these figures are true, then Georgia suddenly became a leader. How's that?
Georgia and mining
To begin with, this hospitable mountainous state inherited twenty (!) Hydroelectric power stations from the USSR. Another - Daryal hydroelectric station, the Georgians, by the way, built independently and put into operation several years ago. Almost all of these hydroelectric power stations are relatively low-power - the annual generation is, on average, 120-400 million kWh. However, the Inguri hydroelectric power station stands out against this background, with an estimated capacity of 130 MW or 4,430 million kWh.
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 before the beginning of the 1960s (some began to be built as far back as 1927 as part of the local industrial revolution in the USSR, if that may be called this period). The idea was simple: Georgia was to become the region’s energy hub. After the collapse of the Soviet state, Georgians suddenly found that they had a positive energy balance. If the workers and peasants: now they produce much more electricity than they consume. So 1 kW with a consumption of 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.
Excess electricity and, accordingly, low tariffs, became the reasons for the interest of miners from Russia, figuring out whether a passport to Abkhazia is needed. In the past few years, a trend has been observed in the community towards the use of renewable sources, since farms consume a monstrous amount of electricity, and therefore caravans from mining farms pulled into this mountainous state.
And now Irkutsk
It is not surprising, but the situation in Irkutsk is very similar to the situation in Georgia. Only instead of 21 hydropower plants across the country, there is one, but an extremely large one. The Irkutsk Hydroelectric Power Station is located on the Hangar and was built under the same Soviet Union. The units were put into operation in 1958 and since then the station has been successfully generating electricity. The total generation of this hydroelectric power station is slightly lower than that of the Ingurskaya hydroelectric station - 4,100 million kWh per year.
But above we said that in Russia a kilowatt costs about 4 rubles, what's the catch? The bottom line is that the Irkutsk hydroelectric station sells its electricity at 1 ruble per kilowatt, which is comparable to the previously mentioned Georgian tariffs. In addition, since the Angara is a flat river, it is much easier to place farms near a hydroelectric power station than in the Georgian scenario.
And the miners reached for cheap electricity to the shore of the Angara. It comes to the point that ICOs are already being held for the construction of mining farms in the Irkutsk region, dividends from tokens of which will be paid on the basis of the amount mined by the farm in the future.
The hype around Irkutsk was also supported by the federal media, which sprang up in a series of reports that miners utilize heat from farms by heating residential premises in the region. Confirmation that Irkutsk has become the capital of Russian mining is that the world's largest producer of ASIC, the Chinese company Bitmain, decidedopen in the city its own service center for equipment maintenance. It is located at ul. Rakitnaya 12, office 103. This put the Siberian city on a par with Hong Kong and California, where Bitmain also has its own service centers. If you are not ready to move to Irkutsk, and you want to mine, then you should look to us
Total
No matter how nice it is to mine in China, right next to Bitmain’s ASIC factories, the community continues to search for new sites. HPPs are a great alternative. Tariffs for this electricity do not depend so much on surges in energy prices, such as coal or fuel oil produced from oil. The advantage of renewable sources is that environmentalists will stop shouting that miners uselessly burn kilotons of coal and oil for their “coins”.
Will there be new locations in the companies of Georgia and Irkutsk? Unlikely. All more or less sensible places where it was economically feasible to install hydroelectric power stations 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 the open field, and be the only consumers of their electricity. In the meantime, the entire segment is dependent on existing energy networks, which are not always ready for the appearance of such voracious consumers.