Canadian energy company Transeastern Power Trust has finalized the acquisition of a wind farm in Southeastern Romania, developed by OMV Petrom, and will use the renewable energy produced there to mine bitcoin. The company plans to expand the bitcoin mining operation to all 15 of its renewable power generating facilities.
Located in southeastern Romania, the Dorobanțu wind farm operates with 15 Vestas V-90 turbines, each with a 3 MW capacity, and was originally developed by Romanian oil company OMV Petrom, a subsidiary of OMV, following a USD $90 million investment.
OMV Petrom announced its intention to sell the 45 MW wind farm in early 2016, stating that “wind power production no longer fitted into the company’s strategic direction”.
Transeastern Power Trust sealed the deal with OMV Petrom using USD $23 million of short-term bridge financing and a EUR €2.8 million vendor financing which will be repaid from the proceeds of a USD $43 million brokered private placement.
Following the recent acquisition, the Canadian company decided to move from a renewable energy utility model to a vertically integrated bitcoin mining operation.
The company will use its own renewable energy to mine bitcoin and has changed its name to Blockchain Power Trust to reflect the new business strategy.
Power Trust has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire bitcoin mining equipment worth USD $20 million. Upon full deployment, the company expects its total hashing power to be over 90 Petahash of SHA-256 Bitcoin mining computing power.
“We believe we are pioneering a new and robust business model. We are well positioned to power our mining operations primarily through clean energy generated at our own operations at nominal cost augmented by revenue from green certificates earned through the generation of renewable energy. We believe that this is an environmentally sustainable model for cryptocurrencies and one that will allow us to operate profitably in many cryptocurrency pricing environments. We look forward to leveraging our knowledge of renewable energy operations and experience with delivering large scale infrastructure projects to execute our leading-edge cryptocurrency strategy,” Power Trust CEO J. Colter Eadie said.
The Ontario-based company has already acquired its first piece of mining equipment – a HashTank H40 from Green Revolution Cooling (GRC). Bringing together mining hardware from Antminer and GRC’s proprietary oil immersion cooling technology, the fully integrated H40 unit delivers 5,832 TH/s with a maximum power consumption of 670 kW. The equipment will be onsite and operational by the end of March, the company said.
“We believe that combining GRC’s proprietary liquid immersion-based cryptocurrency mining technology with our own renewable energy operations will result in one of the most efficient and low-cost operators in this nascent industry,” Colter Eadie said.
Power Trust currently owns and operates 15 renewable power generating facilities: two wind farms, two solar farms and 11 hydroelectric power plants – all of them in Romania.
In January, Power Trust’s own operations generated 14,192 MWh of renewable energy. The company is expected to expand its bitcoin mining operations to its entire renewable generation platform.