Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA), a major Bitcoin mining company, acquired a 114-megawatt wind farm in Hansford County, Texas.
The company will use excess wind power and recycled ASICs to power a behind-the-meter data centre, implementing its new Advanced ASIC Retirement Initiative.
The wind farm in Hansford County has 114 MW of operational wind generation and 240 MW of interconnection capacity that would have otherwise been curtailed. The wind farm will operate intermittently, only mining Bitcoin when wind power is available, which is expected to be approximately 30% of the time.
By running a data centre at this location, MARA aims to reduce mining dependency on the grid, ease grid congestion, foster the expansion of renewable energy projects, and create localised energy demand. It aligns with the company’s vision to transform underused sustainable energy sources into economic value and minimize energy costs to nearly zero.
Except for the usage of renewable energy, the bitcoin miner boosts the sustainability of its new data centre with the incorporation of older mining equipment, extending its lifecycle and demonstrating resourcefulness in energy use. Older-generation ASIC mining hardware that would have otherwise been written off or sold into the secondary market will serve the mining purpose at the new site. It is a more sustainable and capital-efficient alternative to discarding used machines.
The acquisition, expected to close in early 2025, is part of MARA’s general plans to expand its renewable energy portfolio and reduce operational costs.
It was stated that after the completion of the transaction and the site’s planned expansion, MARA’s Bitcoin mining portfolio would reach approximately 1.1 gigawatts of capacity. More than half (54%) of this expected capacity will be located at sites directly owned and operated by the company. Those are distributed across eleven locations on three continents. This would represent a significant increase in self-operated megawatts compared to the company’s total portfolio in December 2023.
It also reflects the broader competition for energy resources, as sectors like artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly demand electricity. In the United States, for example, local technology companies are actively using energy assets that are owned by bitcoin miners to provide dwindling electricity supplies for their rapidly expanding data centres with artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
