Hut 8 turns to power production with plans mobile generating stations

By COLLIN GALLANT on February 25, 2021.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant

Hut 8’s advertised big move into power production appears to be focused on developing mobile generating stations for use initially at natural gas facilities in North Dakota and Texas.

On Monday, the company with major operations in Alberta announced it was advancing talks with power system developer Validus to create “industrial power platforms” to reduce emissions and generate revenue in the sector.

That raised eyebrows in Medicine Hat, where the Hut 8 data processing centre is the largest customer at the city’s electric utility department.

A now deleted Q&A posted online by Hut 8 officials stated the focus would be in the United States where flaring and venting of methane from oil and gas facilities is a concern to environmental regulators.

Burning the hydrocarbon rather than releasing it in pure form reduces its effect as a greenhouse gas by up to 90 per cent.

The Validus company’s website shows video of a tractor trailer unit reportedly able to convert waste gas to up to 54 megawatts of electricity.

The system is marketed as a way to reduce CO2 output, power remote worksites and provide peaking power during supply shortages.

It’s not likely that Alberta utility regulators would approve short-term or rotating grid connections, but power could be used to operate processing centres used in cryptocurrency dealing.

Several years ago, rumours circulated of cryptocurrency operators approaching oil and gas companies about arranging power supply at remote facilities.

Cryptocurrency transactions use immense amounts of power to compute. Hut 8’s contract with Medicine Hat City involves 44 megawatts supplied directly from the Unit 16 power plant, and handles up to another 23 megawatts from the provincial power grid.

Before construction of the Hut 8 facility in 2018, peak demand for the rest of the city was 170 megawatts.