Canada Bitcoin Miner Acquiring Two Pennsylvania Coal Plants
A Canada-based crypto mining company is acquiring two Pennsylvania coal-fired power plants as part of its purchase of a digital mining group. Bitfarms Ltd. is set to buy Stronghold Digital Mining in a deal expected to close this month. Stronghold's shareholders approved the sale earlier this year. Stronghold owns the 85-MW Scrubgrass waste coal power plant in Venango County, and the 80-MW Panther Creek waste coal facility in Carbon County. Bitfarms is expected to use electricity from the coal-fired stations to power its energy-intensive bitcoin mining operations. Bitfarms already has a presence in Pennsylvania, having purchased a data center in Mercer County last year. The deal also could hold value for Bitfarms since it would enable the company to sell power to wholesale markets in the PJM territory. Officials with PJM, the regional grid operator, have expressed concerns about having enough power to meet increased demand in their 13-state territory from data centers, new manufacturing plants, and electrification initiatives. PJM and Pennsylvania Gob. Josh Shapiro recently settled a lawsuit over PJM's capacity market pricing. PJM has acknowledged a capacity shortage could affect its system as early as the 2026/2027 delivery year.
More than 54 GW of power generation capacity was retired in PJM from 2011 to 2023, according to a report from Monitoring Analytics, the grid operator's market monitor. PJM officials also have asked power plant operators to delay the retirement of some facilities providing baseload power. PJM in a recent presentation said several power projects have interconnection agreements with the grid operator, but many of the facilities are not being built due to local opposition, problems securing equipment or financing, or permitting issues. Toronto, Ontario-based Bitfarms as part of the deal said the Scrubgrass and Panther Creek bitcoin mining sites could be expanded to supply up to 955 MW of electricity by adding additional transmission capacity. Public documents related to the Bitfarms-Stronghold deal show that Stronghold was considering a sale of the company at least since 2021. The documents said more than a dozen groups looked into buying Stronghold, but did not want to purchase the two power plants.
The documents showed that Bitfarms initially was only interested in Stronghold's mining assets, offering $120 million for the bitcoin miners. It eventually increased its offer to buy the whole of Stronghold in an all-stock deal with an enterprise value of $175 million. An investor presentation from Bitfarms noted, 'Pennsylvania is a conservative business friendly jurisdiction with a notably pro-Bitcoin & pro-energy Democratic Governor [Shapiro].' The company also noted that the Scrubgrass and Panther Creek power plants are near major metropolitan areas and important fiber infrastructure to facilitate data transmission. Bitfarms has said it expects to build data centers alongside the existing power plants, with electricity from the plants serving the data center sites. The company also said that existing grid connections at each site have the 'potential to double megawatts available for mining operations." Bitfarms also wrote that it plans to make its mining assets available as a demand response resource for the power grid. 'Participation in these programs is the first step in a broader energy arbitrage strategy that we will be developing in the coming months across our PJM portfolio,' Alex Brammer, Bitfarms' senior vice president of global mining operations, said in a statement. —Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
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