The Government Does Not Buy Electricity Supply, This Is What Hydropower Entrepreneurs Do In The City Of Rika

Hydropower in Costa Rica sells electricity to crypto miners. (Photo; thegeekpub)

JAKARTA - A small river in the middle of coffee plantations, sugar cane fields, and forests provides energy for a hydroelectric power plant in Costa Rica. The hydropower plant powers hundreds of computers connected to the country's crypto mining businesses.

As reported by Reuters, there are more than 650 machines from 150 customers operating non-stop from eight containers powered by a power plant next to the Poas River, 35 kilometers from San Jose, the nation's capital, which generates almost all of its electricity from green energy sources.

The plant was forced to find its own way to sell its electricity after 30 years, as the government stopped buying electricity during the pandemic due to an oversupply of electricity in the Central American country. In Costa Rica, the government has a monopoly on energy distribution.

“We had to stop activity for nine months, and exactly one year ago I heard about Bitcoin, blockchain, and digital mining,” said Eduardo Kooper, president of the family business that owns the 60-acre CR Data Center farm and factory.

"I was very skeptical at first, but we saw that this business was consuming a lot of energy and we had a surplus," Kooper said.

The hydroelectric company, with its three generators worth $13.5 million (Rp185 billion) and three Megawatts of capacity, and invested US$500,000 (Rp7.1 billion) to venture into hosting digital mining computers.

Kooper said international crypto miners were looking for clean, cheap energy and a stable internet connection, which many Costa Ricans have. However, he said the Costa Rican government should be more aggressive in trying to attract more crypto mining businesses, although he did not provide specifics on what strategy to take.

So far, Costa Rica has no specific regulations for crypto, unlike El Salvador, which became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021.

Costa Rica's central bank said it provided space for technological innovation to enable the Fintech industry to form, and continued to monitor its development.

So far all CR Data Center customers are local miners, such as Mauricio Rodriguez, a 31-year-old computer security engineer who entered digital mining to earn extra money from home in 2021 with $7,000 worth of equipment.

“Installing it here is much more profitable than at home,” said Rodriguez, after he calculated that it would cost only half that of setting up a Bitcoin mining network at home. This is certainly very profitable after being able to connect his computer to the network at the river power plant.