A new project in Finland is turning energy from mining Bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrency into energy to heat homes during the cold Finnish winter.
Bitcoin mining infrastructure firm Hashlabs Mining has introduced a pioneering project enabling heat generation using specially designed Bitcoin mining devices.
The project combines heat production from the hydro-cooled ASIC mining device — a WhatsMiner M63S — with the Finnish district heating system, where the heat is transferred from a centralized source through a network of insulated pipes to multiple buildings. The new project is designed to allow households to benefit from industrial BTC mining.
“With the help of industrial consumers like Bitcoin miners, Finland can increasingly use its massive nuclear power plant to produce heat,” Hashlabs Mining co-founder Jaran Mellerud said in a post on X on April 23.
A local partner of Hashlabs has already integrated two Bitcoin mines with district heating facilities and is currently integrating a third one, Mellerud said.
In the project, Hashlabs specifically utilizes the hot water generated from WhatsMiner M63S mining, which reaches a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius. “The best provider of reliable, high-temperature water for district heating is Bitcoin mining,” the Hashlabs founder stated.
WhatsMiner-generated hot water is set to replace the heat generated in plants utilizing fuels like biomass and other carbon-neutral heat sources, as well as peat, hard coal and others.
As of 2019, most of Finland’s district heat was produced with wood fuels, accounting for 35%, and hard coal with 18%, according to data from Statistics Finland.
Peat ranked the third most important energy source in district heat production in 2019, with 15% produced with peat.
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The concept of using the energy coming from Bitcoin mining for heating has been gaining momentum in the past few years, with savvy Bitcoin miners finding many ways to make Bitcoin more environmentally-friendly and sustainable.
As previously mentioned by Cointelegraph, some miners found ways to use Bitcoin mining-created heat to warm swimming pools, dehydrate meat to make beef jerky or even dry out timber. In June 2023, a bathhouse in New York told its customers that it was using the byproduct heat from Bitcoin mining rigs as the energy to run its facilities.
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