Under the directions of the Kazakhstan Government, the authorities there had been tasked to assess the power consumed by a single crypto mining farm against the electricity consumed by country’s industry and other sectors, including the electricity consumed in household. The study was done to provide further power to the mining farms to meet the growing demand of cryptocurrencies’ minting.

A news has been making headlines in Kazakhstan that the Government may impose some restrictions upon the mining activities. The news was later also confirmed by the Energy Minister of the Government of Kazakhstan. The Ministry said that imposition of certain restrictions is necessary to avoid becoming victim of power crisis.

In this context, the Energy Ministry of Kazakhstan had given the task of assessing crypto mining power consumption to the relevant departments. Without going into the comparisons first, energy department informed the Ministry that a mining facility consumes 5MW of electricity every hour. This would mean that there is a consumption of 3.6 million KW of electricity, by a single mining farm, every month. According to the department, 3.6 million KW of electricity is usually consumed by at least 24,000 homes each month.

Kazakhstan, which falls within the Central Asian region, has become a crypto mining hub. Since China massacred its mining industry, therefore, many of the Chinese miners have established mining farms in Kazakhstan. So, for the time being, China’s crypto mining burden has been taken over by Kazakhstan. Another very crucial aspect of why Kazakhstan has become a preferred destination for miners is because of its cheap electricity rates. Resultantly, Kazakhstan has been catering a large number of local miners as well as miners who have come from abroad.

However, the negative impact is that electricity consumption in the country has gone above the alarming level. It is possible that there is going to be an acute shortage of electricity by summer 2022. This can be proven from the fact that in between January to September, electricity consumption has surged by at least 7.4% in Kazakhstan. For the time being, winter has prevailed in Kazakhstan which has reduced electricity consumption at the household level. This 7.4% increase reflects consumption of 83 billion KWHs.

Already, the Government officials working with Nur-Sultan had held responsible more than 50 mining facilities for the increase in electricity consumption. They claimed that these 50 mining facilities were running on an increased load of 972 MW. However, the available load in the area, where these farms are located, is not more than 693 MW. Resultantly, distribution centers had been facing problems for meeting the load. Consequently, there were power outages, system failures and load shading.

The officials had also pointed out several farms which were consuming electricity illegally, which too was the cause of consumption increase. However, the Ministry has now asked the departments to lay down a proposal in everybody’s favor.