Iran's blame-it-on-Bitcoin 'leccy shortage probably isn't a US hack cover story... yet Iran claims that recent surges in electricity demand, leading to blackouts and brownouts, were caused by too many cryptocurrency miners’ power-hungry machines being hooked up to the national grid – though all may not be as it seems. Radio Free Europe reported that Iranian energy ministry spokesman Mostafa Rajabi blamed alt- …
I've encountered a variant on that: cheap tariffs with capped usage. From memory, the cheapest tariff would not allow you to draw more than 3KW, which works fine if you don't do anything intensive (like an electric cooker or shower) and schedule middling-load things to avoid running all at once.
You organise your life around usage patterns that work. Just as with "Economy 7" you schedule certain things - like running the dishwasher - for overnight. I lived with that tariff for something over two years, and it's no great hardship. I think it was entirely practical (though possibly also historic): if you have a more limited grid than perhaps the typical commentard is accustomed to, then having a decent chunk of your users capped like that helps with managing demand peaks.
If it doesn't work for you, just use the next tariff up.
It's been a long time since I've worried about it, but in both Texas and Kansas, residential users have been faced with increasing rates as their usage goes up for both electricity and water.
This isn't just "tax the rich"--the system produces the cheap stuff first. As system demand goes up, the cost of a marginal unit of production goes up too.
Of course, the operators abuse the system, but...
Connecting into the grid without using a meter is cheaper and less conspicuous than a field full of very expensive solar panel, which are possibly on the sanctions list. Except of course, as we see, large power draws can be identified and located.
I wonder if this would have been a story if the bitcoin miners had been paying market rates for the power they used? And, as alluded to above, maybe it's effectively a nationalisation of the local bitcoin mining industry and the Govt. will re-locate them and continue running them. A Govt. run scheme in what is effectively a dictatorship could run a very large farm. This could be enough to do things like foreign trade or de-stabilise (even more) the worldwide bitcoin market (would that affect the world much?)
Would the sanctions list matter there? Surely there are - or could be - solar panels free of US technology? A Chinese supplier would be an obvious choice - even if sanctions deny them the use of the regular international banking system for payment and raise hassle and cost.
But of course, they're a sitting-duck target for a country that faces exceptional levels of threat from hostile powers.
"Would the sanctions list matter there? "
Maybe. The thing with sanctions, especially when placed and enforced by a large trading nation, is that said large trading nation then goes on to levy fines or trading restrictions with any country or company who trades restricted items with the sanctions target. If you have little to no links with the sanctions imposers then, as a company you might decide to go ahead and trade. But expect pressure to be applied to your government and have the pressure passed on down to you. Trade is a heavily intertwined worldwide network, more so than ever in the past. It's much harder to break sanctions without yourself becoming a target/victim.
Prior to the revolution, the US was building a bunch of multipurpose DDG's based on the Spruance hull for Iran. Obviously, they weren't delivered. The ships were completed anyway and entered US service as the Kidd class. These were well known for being far better air-conned than other US DDG's; and therefore a somewhat more desirable posting than many.
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