> This is basically fake news. The plant serves regular customers, and since it costs a lot to fire it up or shut it down, during the period where there is excess supply of electricity it is used to mine bitcoin.
That’s not true.
The power plant in upstate New York has been offline for almost a decade. It was purchased and reactivated specifically to mine Bitcoin. https://www.nysfocus.com/2021/04/13/new-york-bitcoin-mining-...
The power plant in Montana was due to close in 2018, until they realized they could sell the power to Bitcoin miners. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/bitcoin-miner-mar...