Costa Rica hydro plant resumes operations thanks to mining

The owner of a small hydroelectric plant in Costa Rica has set up a mining farm on its grounds to relaunch a 30-year venture after months of downtime, Reuters reports.

During the pandemic, the government trimmed electricity purchases due to a surplus of supply in the country, where the state holds a monopoly on power distribution.

“We had to shut down operations for nine months, and exactly a year ago I heard about Bitcoin, blockchain and digital mining,” explained the hydro plant owner Eduardo Cooper.

He said he was initially skeptical, but was persuaded that cryptocurrency mining consumes a lot of energy — energy the plant already produces in surplus.

Cooper’s company, which operates three power plants worth $13.5 million with total capacity of 3 MW, invested $500,000 in building the mining farm.

In eight containers housed at the Data Center CR on the site, more than 650 mining devices are deployed for 150 clients.

One of them told the publication that he took up home mining in 2021 with equipment worth $7,000. But hosting it at the river power plant proved far more profitable due to energy tariffs that are nearly half as high.

According to Cooper, the government should more aggressively attract miners to the country. Industry representatives around the world are seeking cheap green electricity and reliable internet connections, something Costa Rica has in abundance, he noted.

So far, all Data Center CR clients are local.

Earlier, authorities in another Central American country, El Salvador, announced plans to attract miners for cryptocurrency mining on volcano-powered clean energy.

In October 2021, El Salvador began Bitcoin mining at the geothermal plant of state-owned LaGeo. According to СМИ, 300 devices have been installed at the facility.

Experts expressed doubts about both the economic viability of such a method of electricity generation and its environmental impact.

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