Fred Thiel, CEO of Marathon Digital, claims that crypto miners participating in demand response schemes have helped to stave off blackouts in Texas this year. Mining facilities acted “like a capacitor,” he says, echoing the battery metaphor, allowing the grid to remain on an even keel.
Enthusiasm for the plan from Abbott and other crypto enthusiasts has been punctured by academics who claim even the basic premise is flawed. The idea of using huge crypto mines to control energy demand is based on “misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the grid and how it operates,” says Adrian Shelley, an energy policy expert and branch director of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Although
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