An electrical utility in the Canadian state-controlled province of British Columbia has announced that it intends to temporarily halt any new requests for electrical connections by cryptocurrency miners for the next 18 months. This plan is being carried out in order to save money.

In a statement made public on December 21, the British Columbia government broke the news in a statement it had issued. According to the statement, the pause will provide the government and BC Hydro with an opportunity to develop a permanent framework that is able to better balance the requirements of cryptocurrency miners with those of residents and businesses in the region. This is something that has been explained as possible as a result of the pause.

Seven bitcoin mining plants are now connected to the network maintained by BC Hydro.

These six additional wind farms, which have a total capacity of 273 megawatts when combined, are not expected to be damaged in any way from the outage.

On the other hand, new cryptocurrency mining projects will not be able to start the connection process with BC Hydro, and projects already in the early stages of the connection procedure would also see their progress paused, as mentioned. Additionally, it was mentioned that there are already 21 cryptocurrency mining projects that have requested a combined total of 1,403 megawatts of electricity to run their operations.

According to information provided by the Ministry, this amount of electrical energy is equivalent to the amount that would be required to power some 570,000 homes or 2.1 million electric cars annually in the province.

The British Columbia Power and Hydroelectric Authority published a document titled “Crypto Dilemma” in December 2022. In the report, the authority issued a warning that an unprecedented number of applications for cryptocurrency mining operations could affect potentially the existing power supply. and lead to higher electricity costs for people in the province of British Columbia.

Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining is now banned in New York State, making it the first state in the United States to implement such a ban. It is expressly prohibited by this regulation to carry out any new mining activity that is not powered entirely by renewable energy sources.