Considering that over 500 million people in Africa live in rural communities out of reach of main power grids, mining Bitcoin (BTC) has been a challenge. However, it has also sparked some creative solutions that might not only solve the problem of Bitcoin mining but also provide reliable electricity access in general.
Indeed, one of these solutions has been to build microgrids powered by renewable energy sources, and their potential has attracted both hobbyists and companies interested in mining Bitcoin, Nigerian Bitcoiner and CEO of a Bitcoin venture capital fund Recursive Capital, Abubakar Nur Khalil, said in his Forbes piece on May 24.
Hydropower minigrids
According to Khalil, one example is the Kenyan Bitcoin mining company Gridless which deploys hydro-powered microgrids (with a capacity of under 1 MW) to power three rural communities in East Africa and has recently reached more Kenyan communities thanks to the seed funding led by Jack Dorsey’s Block and Bitcoin VC firm Stillmark.
On top of that, Gridless has also created the Green African Mining Alliance (GAMA) with three other companies – QRB Labs from Ethiopia, Sukuma Ventures from Kenya, and Trojan Mining from Nigeria – with the goal to create a standardized approach to sustainable cryptocurrency mining.
Together, these companies released the ‘Blueprint for Bitcoin Mining and Energy in Africa’ report earlier in May, featuring actionable insights for “reducing the electricity-access gap in underprivileged regions with minigrids and small-scale Bitcoin data centers.”