After 17 years of recovering the electricity grid in Iran, the power outage crisis has returned to the capital, Tehran, and dozens of other cities, by two hours a day during the last month, and complete darkness began to invade the streets, especially after midnight.

Although the Electricity Organization was keen at first to highlight the increase in consumption by more than 17% compared to last year due to the cold weather, the General Director of Industrial Zones in Tehran Saber Bernian attributed the reason for the power outage crisis to the increasing number of Bitcoin extraction devices.

Cryptocurrencies

Bernian criticized, in a speech, the country's authorities resorting to cutting off the electricity supply in industrial towns without prior warning, which led to large losses in production lines.

In the context, the head of the Cement Factories Syndicate, Abdul Ridha Sheikhan, attributed the increase in cement prices to the reduction in production due to cutting electricity in recent days.

For his part, a spokesman for the electricity industry, Mustafa Rajabi Mashhadi, revealed a significant increase in the consumption of cheap electricity intended for home use by Bitcoin mining activists.

However, other reports revealed the conversion of some industrial workshops, poultry farms and other centers supported by cheap energy to cryptocurrency mining farms.

Observers in Iran believe that the authorities' approval in recent years to formally extract the bitcoin aims to circumvent the banking sanctions that former US President Donald Trump reinstated after his withdrawal from the nuclear deal in 2018.

The streets of Tehran plunge into darkness during the night hours (Iranian press)

Chinese farmer

In the wake of widespread reports about an increase in unauthorized Bitcoin mining centers, the concerned authorities launched a massive campaign to close them, as the Electricity Organization confirmed the closure of 45,000 devices during the past days, adding that this number was consuming about 100 megawatts of electricity.

Bitcoin mining activists responded to the closure campaign by uncovering several Chinese farms to extract cryptocurrencies from them in the provinces of Kerman and West Azerbaijan, prompting Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian to comment by saying, "Those who have a license to mine cryptocurrencies can continue their activities" and that the closure campaign targets illegal farms. .

With the continuing controversy over what activists described on social media platforms as "duplication in dealing with local and Chinese bitcoin mining centers", the authorities were forced to close a large center containing tens of thousands of digital currency mining devices for an Iranian Chinese company in Rafsanjan, in the southeastern province of Kerman.

Numbers and numbers

For his part, Ghulam Ali Rakhshani Mehr, Vice President of the Electricity Company, announced that the Chinese-Iranian Bitcoin Mining Center in Rafsanjan was working legally by paying a higher price for the electricity it uses, while the local authorities in Kerman Governorate announced that the center was consuming 175 megawatts out of a total of 600 megawatts. It is the amount allocated to the country's cryptocurrency mining farms.

There are about 200 bitcoin mining farms spread across Iran, according to Muhammad Hussain Metwally Zadeh, General Director of the Electricity Distribution Company "Tawanir", who confirmed the temporary closure of these centers to overcome the power outage crisis, indicating the difficulty of closing illegal centers due to the lack of accurate statistics about them.

The head of the cryptocurrency farmer association, Muhammad Reda Sharafi, revealed that the authorities had issued licenses to about 1,000 investors in the bitcoin mining sector so far, criticizing the government's decision to place restrictions on Bitcoin mining activists, including exorbitant tariffs on electricity amounting to 5 times the other industrial sectors, and stressed that the sector Cryptocurrency mining represents a valuable opportunity to circumvent the sanctions imposed on the country.

About 200 farms are spread across Iran to mine Bitcoin (Anatolia)

other reasons

Although Bitcoin farms are accused, the Chairman of the Energy Committee at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Hamid Reza Salehi sees other factors that have a greater impact on the power outage crisis.

Salehi explained in a press statement that recent depressions have increased domestic and commercial gas consumption, which has led to a deficit in the amount of gas consumed in power plants, in addition to the role played by the feet of power station tools and the distribution network.

The official pointed out that the terms of contracts for electricity exports to neighboring countries clearly indicate that they will be in effect only when there is no shortage of energy security inside the country.

On the other hand, the authorities announced a package of incentives to reduce electricity consumption by citizens to become at symbolic or free prices, as well as raising the capacity of energy production in a number of electricity generation stations distributed in the governorates to reduce the power cut. Unauthorized Bitcoin mining centers in order to close them.