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Specifically referring to Iran...

https://old.iranintl.com/en/world/bitcoin-mining-iran-profit...

https://www.businessinsider.in/cryptocurrency/news/cryptocur...

https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/bitcoin-mining-and-blackouts...

From that last one:

> The photo of a power bill with an extremely huge price tag, issued for a customer named “Iran and China Investment Company,” has gone viral in recent days. The power bill, which apparently belongs to the Rafsanjan mining farm operated by the Chinese, indicates that the miners have used 58,615,905 kWh of electricity in one month, for which they have to pay over 270 billion rials (some $1.2 million).

From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Iran

> By the end of 2013, Iran had a total installed electricity generation capacity of 70,000 MW,

If I did my math correctly ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=58%2C615%2C905+kWh+%2F... ) that one customer represents 0.1% of the max capacity of Iran's power grid.

That leads us to:

> In recent weeks, Iranian power plants have been forced to switch to burning low-grade fuel oil to generate power because a sharp rise in the country’s domestic consumption has led to natural gas shortages. This severely increased air pollution in Tehran and other megacities, increasing public anger toward the government.

You could also work from https://www.elliptic.co/blog/how-iran-uses-bitcoin-mining-to... that has an estimate of 4.5% of all bitcoin mining is being done in Iran to go back to estimating the power consumption.



> 58,615,905 kWh of electricity in one month

That's 80 kW of continuous power usage over a month.


You're out by 3 orders of magnitude, it's equivalent to an ~80MW continuous load.


... And for comparison, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society

China uses 1.5 kWh/household... and if I did my math correct again: 54,000 homes in the power use that a household China would use. Or basing it on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_co... (note change in units) a per capita use of 20,300 people in Iran.


You're right, I forgot that it was kWh already.




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