Texas crypto mines consumed more power than 1 million homes: Exclusive
A Straight Arrow News investigation found that in 2024, large cryptocurrency operations in Texas consumed more electricity mining virtual currencies such as Bitcoin than residential utility customers in the cities of San Antonio and El Paso combined. The footprint of crypto mines is expected to keep growing in the coming years.
As of mid-November, 22 cryptocurrency mining facilities had registered with the Public Utilities Commission of Texas. In 2024, those facilities combined to consume more than 14.7 million megawatt hours of electricity, according to public records obtained by SAN. That corresponds to about 3% of all electricity produced on the state’s power grid in 2024.
The cryptocurrency mines consumed enough electricity to power more than a million Texas homes for a year. Insiders from the Bitcoin industry told SAN it is misleading to compare their electricity consumption to Texas cities because cryptocurrency mines turn off when electricity prices are high. But not all electricity market analysts outside the cryptomining industry are convinced; some said Bitcoin is a factor in rising consumer prices.
Texas has become a major hub of the Bitcoin mining industry, and the state government has even purchased $5 million of Bitcoin. The energy-intensive process uses computers to guess a random string of numbers, which verifies a set of virtual currency transactions, known as a block. It’s a lucrative business: For each block of transactions a mining company correctly verifies, it earns a reward of 3.125 Bitcoin. However, as the industry has grown, so too have concerns among residents and state lawmakers over rising demand on the power grid.
How much electricity does Bitcoin mining use?
The U.S. Energy Information Administration tracks annual retail electricity sales by utility companies across the country.
In 2024, San Antonio’s city-owned utility CPS Energy sold over 11.1 million megawatt hours of electricity to 865,914 homes, according to the EIA data. El Paso Electric, which serves the city of El Paso and parts of southeast New Mexico, sold about 2.7 million megawatt hours of electricity to 312,576 residential customers.
SAN’s analysis found that the amount of electricity consumed by cryptocurrency mines is equal to residential utility customers in the city of San Antonio, the El Paso area and another mid-sized Texas city, such as Garland, where residents consumed over 908,000 megawatt hours of electricity in 2024.
On average, each of the 22 cryptocurrency mines consumed over 668,000 megawatt hours of electricity last year.
While megawatt hours measure how much electricity is consumed over time, megawatts show how much power a facility can consume in an instant. The cryptomining industry has increased how much power it can draw from the grid at once. In the next two years, it’s expected to rise another 20%.
In June 2024, a senior vice president of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas told lawmakers that cryptocurrency mining could draw an estimated 2,600 megawatts of power from the grid. As of November 2025, the electric demand of cryptocurrency mines is 4,288 megawatts and is expected to surpass 5,300 megawatts by 2027.
Where is the data from?
Unbiased. Straight Facts.TM
In 2024, cryptocurrency mines in Texas consumed more than 14.7 million megawatt hours of electricity, enough to power over a million homes for a year.
The Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 1929 in 2023, requiring virtual currency mining operations with a capacity of 75 megawatts or more to file registration forms with the Public Utilities Commission of Texas (PUC). Following its passage, a SAN reporter was the first among several media organizations to request copies of the filings via the Texas Public Information Act.
The PUC denied the request, arguing that public disclosure of the size and location of cryptocurrency mines could be used by terrorists to attack critical infrastructure. But the Texas Attorney General’s office largely sided with the journalists, triggering a lawsuit between the PUC and the attorney general. Litigation is ongoing.
SAN filed another public records request seeking totals from all registered facilities, foregoing information on specific cryptocurrency mines or companies. That request yielded the electricity consumption data reported in this investigation.
The total capacity of cryptocurrency mines and their annual electricity consumption is likely somewhat higher than the available data, which only tracks facilities that can draw at least 75 megawatts from the grid.
While the PUC data includes 22 mines above 75 megawatts that have registered with the agency, a report from the Texas Observer found 60 cryptocurrency mines spread across 33 Texas counties.
As part of this investigation, SAN contacted several of the largest known cryptocurrency companies in the state, including Riot Platforms and MARA, formerly Marathon Digital Holdings. None responded to multiple requests for comment.
How does it impact the grid?
Daniel Batten, a Bitcoin investor and advisory board member for MARA, told SAN that without context, the comparison of Bitcoin mining consumption to various Texas cities is “highly misleading.”
“Bitcoin mining is by economic necessity a non-rival consumer of energy,” Batten said.
Cryptocurrency mining is “flexible” and can turn its energy consumption up or down depending on economic factors, given the price of electricity and the price of Bitcoin.
Through this flexible operation, Batten said cryptocurrency mines “not only help stabilize the grid, they also provide additional revenue for renewable energy operators, which has been shown to accelerate the green energy transition.”
Spencer Marr, co-founder and president at Sangha Renewables, a company launching a 20-megawatt Bitcoin mine that will consume excess solar power behind-the-meter at a facility near Odessa, said “Bitcoin mining operations tend to concentrate where there is an oversupply of power.”
Some studies have shown that cryptocurrency mining can incentivize renewable energy development, while others have demonstrated the potential for large flexible loads to help stabilize the grid. In Texas, Bitcoin mines can rake in millions by enrolling in ERCOT programs to cut their energy use when demand spikes.
Critics, however, view those programs, which pay cryptocurrency companies a premium to participate, as exploitative rather than beneficial. Very little real-world data exists to demonstrate the extent of voluntary cuts to power consumption outside of organized ERCOT demand response programs.
“As the Nobel-winning conservative economist Milton Friedman said, ‘There is no such thing as a free lunch.’ That applies to cryptocurrency miners on the ERCOT grid,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist and lecturer at the University of Houston. “Any cryptocurrency miners on ERCOT using electricity are market demand over and above that of regular Texans.”
Hirs told SAN that without Bitcoin on the grid, overall electricity demand would be lower, as would reliance on some of the power plants that currently operate day in and day out.
“Any cryptocurrency miners on ERCOT using electricity are market demand over and above that of regular Texans,” he said.
Daniel Cohan, a professor at Rice University who has researched energy policy, said the electricity consumption data shows crypto mines are “likely propping up wholesale prices and natural gas use on mild days.”
Cohan said more precise data would be needed to estimate the exact price impact for consumers.
While some Bitcoin companies like Sangha Renewables are co-located with solar power, others like MARA’s facility in Hood County are co-located with natural gas power plants.
In response to SAN’s findings, Mandy DeRoche, a deputy managing attorney for the Clean Energy Program at the nonprofit Earthjustice said, “Bitcoin mining companies are continuing to exploit the system for their profit.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
