A Tokyo Electric Power Co. subsidiary is tapping into bitcoin mining, banking that it can prevent renewable energy from being wasted and prompting its widespread use.

Agile Energy X Inc., based in Tokyo, is experimenting with drawing on renewables to mine bitcoins.

“What we are doing has few parallels in Japan,” said Kenji Tateiwa, president of the company, who has built a career in TEPCO’s nuclear power division. “Success of our framework would prompt more green energy to be introduced.”

Tateiwa got the inspiration for the project in 2018, when issues were being raised about the large-scale “output control” that was put into practice by Kyushu Electric Power Co.

The supply of power should always be balanced with demand, because an imbalance could disturb the power frequency and thereby prompt a large-scale blackout.

Kyushu Electric therefore requested renewable energy producers in its service area to control their output, or temporarily stop generating power, to pre-empt power oversupply, typically when photovoltaic power generation peaked in the daytime.

That means that what precious power generation capacity there was had to be wasted.

Unlike in conventional currency systems, the bitcoin has no central authority. Bitcoin transactions are checked for authenticity and verified by fellow participants of the cryptocurrency network.

...read more at asahi.com