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Duke Energy, the second-largest energy distributor across the United States is reportedly exploring the possibilities of mining Bitcoin. The company is said to have decided on this move to meet the customer demand as a part of its response strategy.
Justin Orkney, Duke Energy’s Lead Rates and Regulatory Strategy Analyst, confirmed this news in the latest episode of Troy Cross’s Bitcoin, Energy, and the Environment podcast. He stated that there’s currently ongoing research into how miners can be onboarded onto the grid, before making the service available to the masses:
“We are exploring general customer phasing concepts [...] I’m working on a Bitcoin demand response study about including Bitcoin mining capacity in our system with an eye toward the demand response functionality [...] We are hoping to do a technology test.”
Furthermore, he added that Duke Energy has been hosting a few low-consumption miners already, which coincides with the recent mining initiative in the country as a part of anti-outage policies and power supply improvement strategies. The idea is to strengthen the power grid via these demand response programs.
With constant Bitcoin mining criticisms for an excessive amount of energy used, the demand response programs might offer a solution in offloading the strain on the current electricity infrastructure. Is this going to be the compromise that everyone has been looking for?