This may be the most 2022 story you stumble across this week. It involves mystery, intrigue, and a surprise twist ending!

Ok, none of those things are true. But it could affect your monthly bills, so let's take a look into what's going on.

Idaho's power is pretty inexpensive when compared to (most) other states, which means it's an ideal place for cryptocurrency miners to do their thing. That thing being mining cryptocurrency, which requires a massive amount of consistent energy. So much, in fact, that some state authorities want to create an entirely new customer category for crypto miners.

Jordon Rodriguez, a representative for Idaho Power, explains their concerns:

These customers have the potential for significant energy demand, which could require Idaho Power to build additional infrastructure. What we don’t want is to have a bunch of speculative load come online in a short amount of time that would potentially require us to go out and build new resources or purchase a bunch of energy in order to meet demand.

Does that mean that when crypto miners gain serious traction in Idaho, your electric bill will go up? Not necessarily. Most of the crypto mining operations in Idaho aren't anything that'll sap our towns and cities of their power source, but if enough serious miners set up shop in the Gem State, we could see some fluctuations to the powergrid.

Idaho Power has stated its prepared to entertain possibly shutting off power to mining operations during peak hours. So don't worry, you can still binge the old seasons of Stranger Things without worrying about interuption.

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