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CLEVELAND – In a department store in Valley City, Ohio, about 2,500 blockchain "miners" work away making so much noise that two people have to shout to be heard.
They belong to LightSpeed Hosting C.E.O. Joshua Holmes and he says there could be many more.
A view of the Valley City structure of LightSpeed Hosting from the top. Holmes says there are about 2,500 miners sitting on the shelves.
"At present, we can only use one-third of the full capacity of this structure," said Holmes.
Holmes says he had to give up a lot of work just because there simply is not enough energy for his machines, which work constantly.
Blockland Cleveland runs from December 1-4 at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland, which was donated by Cuyahoga County for the event.
Blockchain should be a safer way to track data by storing information on so many servers simultaneously that it is almost impossible to hack. Miners store this information as they perform complicated mathematical equations trying to discover new "blocks".
Fans in the room and on every car try to prevent the miners from overheating while they work all day, every day.
"Miners are actually running the network," said Holmes.
They also attract a lot of power.
"The typical miner, if you take two, is the same as the whole electricity supply for the whole house," Holmes said.
He says that the 2,500 miners he has can use all the power of some cities. Unlike cities, miners run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so there are no peaks and falls in energy consumption.
"There is a substantial part of all the power in China, I believe, entering the Bitcoin mining at this point, so it is not surprising that we can break the grid here in Cleveland with some mining operations," he said. executive director of Case Western Reserve University for the Institute for Smart, Secure and Connected Systems Nick Barendt.
Holmes says his miners have overloaded the local power grid three times in the last few months, forcing the company to do only a third of what they could do.
He says that's why infrastructure upgrades are one of the first things that must happen if Cleveland becomes a Blockchain hub. It is something that the organizers of the Blockland Conference are hoping for, but do not expect it to happen soon.
"This is billions of dollars in investment over the past 150 years, so we can not change it overnight," said Barendt.
FirstEnergy replied with the following statement:
As you probably know, blockchain is basically a digital database hosted by millions of computers at the same time that can be shared, accessed and updated by anyone on the Internet. The concept was originally developed to support cryptocurrency, but can be applied virtually to any economic transaction or sharing of financial information.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency activities often use huge computer servers that absorb a lot of power for processing and cooling. We have yet to see much development of this business in the Northeast of Ohio, but we have talked with some potential initiatives. Based on the estimates of the large energy requirements presented by these companies, further development of electrical infrastructures may be needed to support their facilities, depending on where they are located.
FirstEnergy encourages anyone interested in starting this type of business to work with our team at the start of the planning process so we can help them find the best site for their structure that requires the least additional investment. This is the same process that our economic development team uses for other industrial customers with significant energy demands trying to locate the area. Our goal is to help them launch their businesses efficiently and quickly by providing reliable electricity.
Since blockchain and cryptocurrency have not really taken off in our service area, I really have nothing more to give to the story. And since FirstEnergy focuses on the supply of electricity through our utilities rather than on its generation, I have no information on what implications the growth of these companies could have on price or energy availability in the region. I hope this is useful!
– FirstEnergy Energy Delivery and Jennifer Young State Communications Supervisor
