How a Jack Dorsey-backed bitcoin miner uses a volcano in Kenya to turn on the lights in rural homes
HELL’S GATE, Kenya — Two-and-a-half hours northwest of Nairobi by car, a small group of bitcoin miners set up shop at the site of an extinct volcano near Hell’s Gate National Park.
The mine, tucked away on the edge of Lake Naivasha, is operated by a startup called Gridless and consists of a single 500-kilowatt mobile container that, from the outside, looks like a small residential trailer.
Backed by Jack Dorsey’s Block, Gridless electrifies its machines with a mix of solar power and the stranded, wasted energy from a nearby geothermal site. It’s one of six mines run by the company in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia, powered by a mix of renewable inputs and working toward a broader mission of securing and decentralizing the bitcoin network.
Gridless runs Gridlesin Hell’s Gate operates on geothermal power.
MacKenzie Sigalos
“Most people think about bitcoin and the price of bitcoin and how they can save value in it or maybe spend it,” Gridless CEO Erik Hersman told CNBC during a visit to the Kenyan mine earlier this year. “That doesn’t happen without the bitcoin miners and us being globally distributed.”
Decentralization is a key feature of bitcoin, because it means the network isn’t controlled by any entity and can’t be shut down — even if a government disapproves.
Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies are created through a process known as proof-of-work, in which miners around the world run high-powered computers that collectively validate transactions and simultaneously create new tokens. The process requires heaps of electricity, leading miners to seek out the cheapest sources of power.
While there are more than a dozen publicly traded miners, thousands of smaller, private operations are also competing to process transactions and get paid in new bitcoin. That includes individual miners in countries from Venezuela to Lebanon, and can involve a single mining rig in a kitchen or several hundred thousand of them in an industrial-grade datacenter.
Gridless runs a geothermal-powered bitcoin mine in Hell’s Gate on the shore of Lake Naivasha.
MacKenzie Sigalos
Wherever the operation, bitcoin mining is a volatile business, because so much of the economics depends on the price of the cryptocurrency. Since losing 60% of its value in 2022, bitcoin has come roaring back, hitting a record above $73,000 in March, before pulling back a bit in recent weeks.
Much of the rally has been tied to the launch of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S., as well as optimism surrounding the so-called halving that took place late Friday. That event occurs every four years and is designed to cut the reward for bitcoin miners in half, reducing the pace at which new bitcoins enter the market. Prior halving events have been followed by big run-ups in the cryptocurrency.
“Bitcoin is effectively unbreakable at this point,” said Adam Sullivan, CEO of Core Scientific, a bitcoin miner based in Texas. “Bitcoin is at a point where it is more profitable to continue supporting the network than to try and break it.”
Analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a note on April 18 that they expect the geography of crypto mining to shift after the halving as slimmer profit margins force miners to seek cheaper and more reliable forms of energy. The analysts wrote that the U.S. currently accounts for 40% of mining, with Russia at 20% and China at 15%.
“Latin America, Africa and the Middle East have caught the attention of crypto miners due to their lower energy costs,” they wrote.
Bitfarms, based in Toronto, is now operating in Argentina, while Marathon Digital, headquartered in Florida, has expanded into the United Arab Emirates and Paraguay.
Hersman, 48, was raised in Kenya and Sudan, where his parents were linguists. Before getting into bitcoin mining, he and his two co-founders, Philip Walton and Janet Maingi, spent years building internet connectivity infrastructure in rural and urban Africa.
Gridless runs bitcoin mines in Kenya, Malawi, and Zambia on a mix of renewable energy sources. The company’s site in Hell’s Gate operates on geothermal power.
MacKenzie Sigalos
In early 2022, the trio began brainstorming creative solutions for the divide between power generation and capacity, and the lack of access to electricity in Africa. They landed on the idea of bitcoin mining, which could potentially solve a big problem for renewable energy developers by taking their stranded power and spreading it to other parts of the continent. In Africa, 43% of the population, or roughly 600 million people, lack access to electricity.
Gridless now has eight full-time staffers and manages much of its operations remotely with its software.
Turning lava into bitcoin
Hell’s Gate is a deep and winding canyon that is home to cheetahs, zebras, and giraffes and rimmed by cliffs, volcanoes and thick bush.
The area is covered in ash, and sulfuric plumes of steam will periodically emit from the ground, a reminder of the surrounding, smoldering volcanic craters that wiped out some of the native Maasai tribe in the mid-19th century and threatened others who dared to take up residence there.
Gone are the days of fatal eruptions and spewing lava. Instead, an elaborate, labyrinthine piping system and volcanic plugs comprise multiple geothermal power stations.
A drilling hole at the Olkaria geothermal power station in Hell´s Gate National Park.
Getty Images/Michael Gottschalk
Volcano-powered bitcoin mining isn’t new.
Iceland, El Salvador and other countries have been harnessing geothermal energy to mine bitcoin. To make the conditions work for miners, the businesses need the combination of a buy-in from local authorities, cheap and abundant power and some infrastructure, said Nic Carter, founding partner of Castle Island Ventures, which focuses on blockchain investments.
“If you have those three ingredients, it can work, but sometimes, it’s the nation state, or a national, state energy company doing it,” Carter said. He pointed to the Middle East, which is getting into flare gas mining as an example of state-level actors entering the business.
“In some cases, it’s with the explicit blessing of the nation state like Bhutan, and then in Texas, it’s just with very favorable local regulators and local conditions,” he said.
Africa is home to an estimated 10 terawatts of solar capacity, 350 gigawatts of hydro and another 110 gigawatts of wind.
Some of this renewable energy is being harnessed already, but a lot isn’t because building the specialized infrastructure to capture it is expensive. Even with 60% of the best solar resources globally, Africa only has 1% of installed solar PV capacity.
Enter bitcoin miners.
Bitcoin gets a bad rap for the amount of energy it consumes, but it can also help unlock these trapped renewable sources of power. Miners are essentially energy buyers, and co-locating with renewables creates a financial incentive to bolster production.
“As often happens, you’ll have an overage of power during the day or even at night, and there’s nobody to soak that power up,” said Hersman. He said his company’s 50-kilowatt mining container can “take up whatever is extra throughout the day.”
Steam tubes at the Olkaria geothermal power station in Hell´s Gate National Park.
Getty Images/Michael Gottschalk
“Within any second or minute, we are going up and down on a certain number of miners that are running,” Hersman said. “It might be down to 50 kilowatts, then up to 300 kilowatts, then down to 200 kilowatts, and then up to another level — and that will happen all day and all night.”
According to the International Energy Agency, in Africa’s rural areas, “where over 80% of the electricity-deprived live, mini-grids and stand-alone systems, mostly solar based, are the most viable solutions.”
Demand from bitcoin miners on these semi-stranded assets is making renewables in Africa economically viable. The power supplier benefits from selling energy that previously had been discarded, while the energy plants will sometimes lower costs for the customer. At one of the Gridless pilot sites in Kenya, the hydro plant dropped the price of power from 35 cents per kilowatt hour to 25 cents per kWh.
The buildout of capacity is also electrifying households.
Gridless says its sites have powered 1,200 houses in Zambia, 1,800 in Malawi and 5,000 in Kenya. The company’s mines also have delivered power for containerized cold storage for local farmers, battery charging stations for electric motorcycles and public WiFi points.
“It’s not really sexy,” Hersman said. “It’s a mining container made from a shipping container. It’s got a bunch of dumb machines sitting in it running the same equation over and over again, but it’s actually what secures the network.”
National Grid Renewables has broken ground on its 100 MW Apple River Solar Project in Polk County, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin solar farm, which will use US-made First Solar Series 6 Plus bifacial modules, will be constructed by The Boldt Company, creating 150 construction and service jobs. Apple River Solar will generate over $36 million in direct economic benefits over its first 20 years.
Once it comes online in late 2025, Apple River Solar will supply clean energy to Xcel Energy, which serves customers throughout the Upper Midwest. According to National Grid Renewables, the solar farm will generate enough energy to power around 26,000 homes annually. It will also offset about 129,900 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year – equivalent to taking 30,900 cars off the road.
“We are excited to see this project begin as it underscores our dedication to delivering clean, reliable and affordable energy to our customers,” said Karl Hoesly, President, Xcel Energy-Wisconsin and Michigan. “This project is an important step in those goals while bringing significant economic benefits to Polk County and the local townships.”
Electrek reported in February that Xcel Energy, Minnesota’s largest utility, expects to cut more than 80% – and possibly up to 88% – of its emissions by 2030, putting it on track to hit Minnesota’s goal of net zero by 2040. It also says it’s on track to achieve its clean energy goals for all the Upper Midwest states it serves – Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Michigan.
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Tesla has announced that it will finally deliver 500 kW charging as it is about to install its long-awaited V4 Supercharger cabinets.
The rollout of Supercharger V4 has been a strange one, to say the least.
Tesla has been deploying the new charging stations for two years and calling them “Supercharger V4”, but it has only been deploying the charging stalls.
Supercharger stations are made of two main parts: the stalls, which are where the charging cable is located, and the cabinets, which are generally located further back and include all the power electronics.
For all these new “Supercharger V4”, Tesla was actually using Supercharger V3 cabinets. This has been limiting the power output of the charging stations to 250 kW – although
Today, Tesla officially announced its “V4 Cabinet”, which the automaker claims will enable of “delivering up to 500kW for cars and 1.2MW for Semi.”
Here are the main features of the V4 Cabinet as per Tesla:
- Faster charging: Supports 400V-1000V vehicle architectures, including 30% faster charging for Cybertruck. S3XY vehicles enjoy 250kW charge rates they already experience on V3 Cabinet — charging up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.
- Faster deployments: V4 Cabinet powers 8 posts, 2X the stalls per cabinet. Lower footprint and complexity = more sites coming online faster.
- Next-generation hardware: Cutting-edge power electronics designed to be the most reliable on the planet, with 3X power density enabling higher throughput with lower costs.
Tesla reports that its first sites with the new V4 Cabinets are going into permitting now. The company expects its first sites to open next year.
We recently reported about Tesla’s new Oasis Supercharger project, which includes larger solar arrays and battery packs to operate the charging station mostly off-grid.
Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to all Supercharger stations, and Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.
While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.
Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:
It took about 8 years, but it sounds like the pieces are now getting actually in place with Supercharger V4, Megapacks, and this new Oasis project.
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Hyundai has a new secret weapon it’s about ready to unleash. To revamp the brand in China and counter BYD’s surge, Hyundai is launching a new AI-powered EV next year. The new model will be Hyundai’s first dedicated electric car for the world’s largest EV market.
With the help of Haomo, a Chinese autonomous startup, Hyundai will launch its first EV equipped with generative AI. It will also be its first model designed specifically for China.
A Hyundai Motor official said (via The Korea Herald) the company is “working to load the software” onto the new EV model, “which will be released in the Chinese market next year.” The spokesperson added, “The level of autonomous driving is somewhere between 2 and 2.5.”
In comparison, Tesla’s Autopilot is considered a level 2 advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) on the SAE scale (0 to 5), meaning it offers limited hands-free features.
With Autopilot, you still have to keep your eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, or the system will notify you and eventually disengage.
Haomo’s system, DriveGPT, unveiled last spring, takes inspiration from the OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.
The system can continuously update in real-time to optimize decision-making by absorbing traffic data patterns. According to Haomo, DriveGPT is used in around 20 models as it looks to play a bigger role in China.
Hyundai hopes new AI-powered EV boosts sales in China
Electric vehicle sales continue surging in China. According to Rho Motion, China set another EV sales record last month with 1.2 million units sold, up 50% from October 2023.
Over 8.4 million EVs were sold in China in the first ten months of 2024, a notable 38% increase from last year.
BYD continues to dominate its home market. According to Autovista24, BYD accounted for 32.9% of all PHEV and EV (NEV) sales in China through September, with over half of the top 20 best-selling EV models.
Tesla was second with a 6.5% share of the market, but keep in mind these numbers only include plug-in models (PHEV).
Like most foreign automakers, Hyundai is struggling to keep up with the influx of low-cost electric models in China. Beijing Hyundai’s sales have been slipping since 2017. Through September, Korean automaker’s share of the Chinese market fell to just 1.2%.
Last month, Hyundai opened its first overseas digital R&D center in China to help kick off its return to the region.
According to local reports, Hyundai is partnering with other local tech companies like Thundersoft, a smart cockpit provider, and others in China to power up its next-gen EVs
With its first AI-powered EV launching next year, Hyundai hopes to turn things around in the region quickly. The new model will be one of five to launch in China through 2026.
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