> I don’t agree that we need any more crypto mining operations, but at what point and whose control does the availability of electricity to a person get determined ?

Assuming we want a society where as many people as possible get their basic need covered while electricity supply is restricted, fixed (high) price on electricity for everyone just means that the richest will buy most of the supply for superfluous use while the poorest won't be able to afford heating.

Directly forbidding superfluous use should help against that. Though politicians may not be good at deciding what is superfluous (I can see resistive heating being deemed needed while gaming wouldn't, which is true but the game machine would heat as well as resistive heating leading to little difference in winter). Exponential price as another comment mentioned sounds like a better idea.

I think you rightfully point out there is a spectrum. So far, the line is at: company that will add just a few jobs, will pull in profits all for themselves, and will take the electrical requirements of half a million people when that much energy is scarce.

Meanwhile, there is a trade-off. If the power were granted, that is half a million apartments worth of hydro power that is no longer available. Where will they get that power instead? Perhaps that can be supplanted by other renewables, but does speak to your point on diesel and other fossil fuels being used instead.

> If you’re payin, why is it not allowed?

Because they are not allowed to charge whatever they want.

Price electricity using an exponential function so that people are incentivized to minimize usage. Use it for whatever you want.

In parts of Texas I believe that is true. For BC hydro - it's a fixed rate based on usage tier. [1] For a large energy user, looks like it would be a quarter a day charge plus the usage charge at $12.50 per kW. [1]

https://app.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

No one would be able to mine profitably while using a diesel generator, so this isn't going to happen

Let's consider a large-scale mining operation that would use 20% (or up to 20% for elastic miners) of the current energy usage of a region. This isn't a hypothetical, this is something that's happened many times.

One of 3 things (or a combination of them) will happen:

A) The energy companies are now incentivized to produce more energy, which has an impact on the environment. Greenhouse emissions, resource extraction, waste, etc.

B) The mining operation may only use surplus energy in some situations. Or at least they claim to, though I'm skeptical of these claims. Regardless, this disincentivizes the energy company from producing energy in an elastic manner; they can now keep their production methods running a bit longer, and they'll get paid for this energy. See (A) for the problems with this. They may also have been incentivized to store surplus energy or peer with other companies whose energy demands would be complementary. They no longer have this incentive

C) More demand for energy results in higher prices for the other customers of the energy company.

I'm really glad BC hydro didn't accept the bid.

That's the point though. You should let people that PAY for electricity use it however they want. If it's profitable to mine bitcoin this tells me that the price of the energy is too low.

While that is true, the price of energy is too low because transmission system limitations bottle it up in a limited geographic area. With proper infrustructure, the PRI es would be much more stable geographically as the number of bottlenecks decreased.

So really what it should tell us is that we don't spend enough on infrustructure.

...or that of mining is too high.