Paraguayan senators will discuss the sale of surplus electricity to miners

What’s new? The Senate of Paraguay has suspended the promotion of the bill to ban mining and decided to consider the benefits of selling excess electricity to industry participants instead of exporting it to Brazil and Argentina. Thus, on April 4, it was proposed to ban mining for at least 180 days due to the lack of regulation of the industry. Officials argued that illegal data centers disrupt the energy supply system. However, a public debate on the pros and cons of BTC mining in the country will be held as early as April 23.

Hearings in the Senate

What else is known? On April 8, Paraguayan lawmakers approved a declaration to support local and foreign investment infrastructure. It is expected to prompt the Ministry of Industry to study the economic benefits of selling bitcoin miners excess energy from the Itaipu hydropower plant, which is one of the largest in the world.

In an April 8 letter to Congress, Senator Salyn Buzarquis notes that 45 licensed miners would bring in $125 million to the National Electricity Administration (ANDE) by 2025 through the installation of additional equipment.

The cost of generating electricity at Itaipu HPP is in the range of $22/MWh, while ANDE can sell the surplus to local miners at $40/MWh. It can earn $73 million per year from this alone, and an additional $17 million in VAT to be directed to the budget.

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According to the authors of the initiative, this will allow ANDE to avoid bankruptcy and not to increase the cost of the resource for individuals. In addition, the development of the industry will create additional jobs.

In an earlier bill from April 4, lawmakers claimed that since February there have been 50 cases of power outages related to illegal connection of miners to sources.

The ban would have affected the industry’s biggest player, Marathon Digital, which deployed a 27MW data center in Itaipu last November. Bitfarms miner and Tether, which issues USDT, the largest USDT stablecoin by capitalization, are also building their farms in Paraguay. In addition, local miners are actively buying used rigs from US companies in anticipation of halving.