A BITCOIN mining project that taps into clean, stranded and excess hydro energy in Malawi, has picked up steam. The company behind the project, Gridless, tweeted that there are now ‘1,600 families connected to this remote hydro minigrid in the mountains of southern Malawi.’
The project exploits 50 kilowatts (kW) of stranded energy to test out as a new Bitcoin mining site. Erik Hersman, CEO and co-founder of Gridless, told Cointelegraph, a Bitcoin news portal, that while it’s a brand new mining project, the ‘impact was immediately felt.’
Bitcoin miners are flexible but energy-hungry clients. They are a plug-in-and-play solution for sources of excess energy around the world. In Malawi, the miners run off environmentally friendly hydropower.
It’s Gridless’ second project in sub-Saharan Africa to date. Late last year, a mining project in Kenya connected a remote community using excess hydropower.
The environment aside, the Bitcoin mine brings economic empowerment and job opportunities to Malawi. Hersman explained that electricity load shedding is common in Malawi, but the 1,600 families using the hydropower source do not have any power issues.
Obi Nwosu, CEO of Fedimint and a board adviser at Gridless, also shed light on the story, explaining that the project in ‘Malawi is one more in a line of what I expect to be many examples over the coming years.’
Bitcoin miners tapping into stranded energy while empowering local communities is a growing trend in 2023. From El Salvador’s promise of geothermal Bitcoin mining to balancing the grid load and sustaining jobs for local communities in Canada, there is a ‘torrent of opportunities coming their way,’ Nwosu explains.
Michael Saylor has described Bitcoin mining as ‘the ideal high-tech industry to put in a nation that has plenty of clean energy but isn’t able to export a product or produce a service with that energy.’ It’s an accurate summation of the project in Malawi.
Ultimately, this type of Bitcoin mining project is more akin to a partnership. Hersman sums it up, ‘We work with the power producer, and they work to keep the power price affordable, and all of their employees are from the community, too, providing jobs for everything from security to linesmen to operations.’