Foreman's 810 Breaker Flips

Eight hundred and ten times. That is the number of times a miner in Texas might need to flip a breaker in a single year just to stay in the black. This is the reality of mining Bitcoin on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, grid. The argument came from the stage at Mining Disrupt Miami 2023, recorded on July 25, 2023.

That was 1,178 days ago. At that moment, Bitcoin was trading around $29,125. Today, the price is significantly higher, yet the core problem Lawrence described remains unchanged: the grid does not care about your hash rate, it cares about its own stability. Dan Lawrence, the co-founder of Foreman, stood before the audience to explain why manual operations are no longer viable in this environment.

He argued that the volatility of the Texas market has become so intense that human reaction times are simply too slow. As Lawrence put it, "agility is going to be key being able to turn on and off very quick to avoid Peak prices." This is not a theoretical concern. Lawrence pointed out that during certain hours, electricity prices can spike to close to five thousand dollars a megawatt hour. For a small-scale operation that is index exposed, those spikes can wipe out months of profit in an afternoon.

The solution, according to Foreman, is not to watch the market, but to let software watch it. Foreman provides automated strike-price software that monitors the grid in real time. When the price hits a predetermined threshold, the system automatically curtails power to the mining rigs. When prices drop, it turns them back on.

Lawrence noted that in their service area, miners are "going to be turning Breakers 810 times just to stay profitable mining in our cut." He cited a specific example from one of the hottest days in ERCOT, where their automation saved customers about 3.7 million dollars by avoiding those high electricity prices. This capability is crucial for survival, especially during bear markets. Lawrence emphasized that if you are trying to stay profitable through a bear market, you are avoiding those high electricity prices. The argument has aged well.

While the price of Bitcoin has risen, the frequency of curtailment events in Texas has not decreased. In fact, as more renewable energy comes online, the grid has become more unpredictable. The days of setting a machine and forgetting it are over. For miners in volatile markets, automation is not just an efficiency tool; it is a survival mechanism.

The full story is on Mining Disrupt at miningdisrupt dot com, and many more like it play around the clock on Bitcoin Radio.