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Recently, due to the shortage of electricity supply, China’s Sichuan province has cut off electricity supply to local crypto miners. Other provinces in South China also implement emergency power rationing measures.
The price of coal which is the raw material for thermal power plants, has been rising since November, hitting a new high for several years. It is expected that the price rise will continue until mid-January 2021.
The deep-seated reason for the soaring coal price lies in the fact that Australia’s coal ships stopping at the port will no longer be able to pick up and unload, while the Indonesian and Russian coal carriers will not be able to enter the port.
Due to the sharp rise of power load in Hunan Province, affected by the reduction of coal combustion, the decline of reservoir water level, and the decrease of imported electricity, the short supply is expected to continue until around the Spring Festival. Changsha city has especially issued the proposal of orderly use of electricity to the general public. Other provinces like Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia also began to limit electricity supply.
Due to the increasing pressure of thermal power operation caused by high coal price and the increase of residential electricity consumption in Sichuan, a recent notice from a mining company said that the local government required all hydropower stations to stop power supply to big data centers from December 8.
Industry insiders pointed out that it is common in Sichuan to give priority to stoppage of power consumption of mining farms during a peak consumption period. In August, large-scale power failure occurred in Sichuan mines due to hot summer and peak power consumption. And Sichuan needs to send power to key cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing.
There are also rumors of power supply restrictions in Xinjiang, but more of which are conventional emergency plans for power shortage in winter, leaving a certain load. Because Xinjiang has more coal resources and less power consumption in the industry.
At present, the computing power of the whole network has shown decline, but whether it is related to the power supply restriction in China is not clear as we need to observe the average computing power in the next seven days.
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