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Wind-powered Bitcoin mining model shows losses at current BTC price
Researchers modeling a 20 MW mine linked to a wind farm found payback does not occur within six years when Bitcoin is priced at or below €60,000.
Bitcoin trades near $63,600 and a new Energy Economics study suggests even sharp annual BTC gains may not make a wind-powered mining project profitable under the modeled conditions.
According to CryptoSlate, researchers at the Technological University of the Shannon modeled a 20 MW Bitcoin mine tied to a hypothetical 100 MW Irish wind farm using hourly 2024 market data. In the model, even when 25% of wind output is curtailed and directed to the mine, the project fails to recover its investment inside the six-year equipment horizon once Bitcoin falls to €60,000.
The study estimates the modeled mine captures 83.1% of the wind farm’s dispatch-down power and shows total system revenue rising from €22.2 million to €29.2 million, a 32% increase, along with higher effective capacity factor from 29% to 32%. Scaling the installation to 30 MW raises absorption and revenue further, but researchers report diminishing returns beyond that range due to additional hardware costs.
CryptoSlate also reported that at €100,000 per BTC, payback for the modeled 20 MW project ranges from 2.13 to 3.56 years depending on curtailment, while at €80,000 it stretches to about 3.4 to 4.1 years across the tested scenarios. At €60,000, none of the curtailment levels tested, from 5% up to 25%, produces a payback within six years, and the model shows negative net present value of €10.1 million with a negative 5.7% return across hashrate and price growth rates.
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