Electricity required for single bitcoin job could power all the homes in Pend Oreille County

Let's put the amount of electricity required for each bitcoin job at Beijing Bitmain's and Allrise Capital's bitcoin mining facility in Usk, WA, into perspective: 

The electricity required to power a single bitcoin-related job there requires so much electricity that it could power all of the homes in Pend Oreille County. 

Alternatively, a single bitcoin job in Usk requires well over twice the amount of electricity used by all other industrial and manufacturing businesses in our county combined, which employ hundreds of the county residents.

Beijing Bitmain's/Allrise's facility uses prodigious amounts of electricity to power specialized computers that do nothing but make quintillions of guesses each second​ in the hopes of winning a global competition for the next block of bitcoin. Their current electricity service agreement with our PUD is for up to 100 megawatts, or 876,000 megawatt hours each year. 

In return, according to their February filing with the State Department of Commerce, they provide a paltry total of six jobs. 

With a little math, we can see that the amount of electricity required for each job at the bitcoin facility requires about the same amount of electricity as the154.7 megawatt hours needed to power all of the homes in Pend Oreille County for a year.  Or more than twice the 63.3 megawatt hours required to power all other industries and manufacturers in our county for a year. 

This exposes the raw truth about large-scale bitcoin mining. First, the almost incomprehensible amounts of electricity required for each bitcoin job place a hard limit on the number of jobs bitcoin mining can create in our county (or any county). Second, if economic development and job creation in a location with limited power infrastructure is our goal, than investing in bitcoin mining is not the way to go. 

For an in-depth review of power in Pend Oreille County read: Box Canyon - PROTECT PEND OREILLE

For previous reporting on the number of jobs at the Usk bitcoin facility, read: Bitmain/Allrise exec admits they have been misleading county on employment numbers - PROTECT PEND OREILLE

And: ​Merkle Standard has six employees but claims to be one of largest employers in Pend Oreille County - PROTECT PEND OREILLE