World’s Largest Independent Hydropower Generator Enters Bitcoin Mining

En+ Group, an Anglo-Russian metals giant and the world’s largest independent hydropower generator, has just announced to enter the bitcoin mining space as the company formed a joint venture with BitRiver, the largest known provider of hosting services and turnkey solutions for institutional operations.
Dubbed Bit+, the newly formed joint venture is already operational with 10 MW of capacity provided by En+. The joint venture aims to provide a bitcoin mining facility with a low carbon footprint. En+ has enormous power capacity and the company plans to enhance its bitcoin mining facility in the future.
According to the official announcement, En+ will be responsible for providing low-cost electricity from the company’s renewable energy sources to Bit+, while will run and manage the operations. Both companies planned to increase the facility’s capacity to approximately 40MW.
The mining facility is located near the current data center of BitRiver in Bratsk, in the Irkutsk Region of Russia.
Commenting on the partnership, Mikhail Khardikov, Head of Energy Business at En+ Group, said: “We actively support the development of datacentres in the Irkutsk Region. Our energy assets in the region produce low-carbon, inexpensive electricity from renewable sources, and we are able to offer surplus energy to these partnerships. Moreover, the low average annual temperature reduces the energy required by the datacentres, making them more efficient and further minimising their carbon footprint.”
Expansion Plans
Igor Runets, CEO at BitRiver spoke exclusively with Finance Magnates to share his views about the partnership and future plans. “Our relationship with En+ Group is long-lasting and effective. Both of our companies benefit from this. Now this cooperation has become even closer. We have created a joint venture Bit +. This is an opportunity for us to openly say that we are trusted by such industry giants as En+. We will be happy to develop our JV and increase its capacity from the existing 10 MW to 40 MW by the end of this year, we have all the possibilities for this,” Runets said.
While talking about the expansion plans, Runets mentioned: “In the future, we only predict to expand cooperation, increasing the number of data centers to work with high energy consumption equipment. So, for example, by the end of 2021, we plan to open additional data centers with a total capacity of up to 260 MW. And we hope that En + will continue to act as our partner.”