Japan’s Largest Power Company Will Mine Bitcoin With Excess Energy

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Power Grid is collaborating with a local semiconductor designer and developer, TRIPLE-1, in order to mine Bitcoin using excess energy around the country. 

The Fukushima nuclear plant, which was operated by TEPCO, was damaged in 2011 by an enormous tsunami and earthquake that destroyed portions of its cooling systems and caused three reactors to melt down.

The power company later acknowledged that it should have taken more aggressive action to avert such calamities. Due to ongoing costs associated with victim compensation, TEPCO is still feeling the effects of the disaster.

Through its wholly-owned subsidiary Agile Energy X, TEPCO Power Grid, the company’s power transmission and distribution company, is now looking for ways to monetize excess power through Bitcoin mining.

The Japanese energy juggernaut said in a statement on Wednesday that Agile Energy X and TRIPLE-1 had signed a memorandum of agreement on November 11th to establish a strategic alliance.

Through the partnership, Agile hopes to set up dispersed data centers all over Japan that utilize TRIPLE-1 semiconductors and surplus electricity from renewable sources.

According to the announcement, a pilot project has already been established on the grounds of TEPCO Power Grid’s office in the Tokyo metropolitan area.

We have started experiments to confirm the system behavior and the impact on the power grid when equipment is operated with a large amount of power on the scale of 1,500 kW, and have confirmed that the equipment can operate normally.

The company also stated that “we believe that selecting and introducing energy-saving products that have a low environmental impact is an important initiative toward the realization of a carbon-neutral society.”