The new Collie solar farm that was approved last month by a Joint Assessment Panel will be set up as a system that can generate electricity and mine digital currencies such as Bitcoin at the same time.
The 20MW photovoltaic facility which will be located within the industrial area will be able to mine cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies, known as virtual or digital currencies are a form of electronic money with no physical coins or notes, yet you can still buy or sell them just like any physical currency.
Hadouken Pty Ltd managing director Ben Tan said because of his background in power development he wanted to create a farm that could do both.
“We designed the plant to be able to do both at the same time. The solar farm produces electricity from the sun, obviously a renewable source that is absolutely clean and then what we do is we build a data centre adjacent to it and connect the energy directly into the data centre which then processes data and mines bitcoins and other cryptocurriences,” Mr Tan said.
“The process of mining is quite well understood it’s just running the programs and running the algorithms to solving the blocks and getting rewarded for solving the blocks. There is no definitive time, so in Bitcoin, blocks are created on a regular basis, how ever long it takes to mine a block is uncertain.”
Users earn revenue, known as coins or tokens, created from computer code using an encrypted string of data blocks, known as a blockchain.
By solving complex puzzles and verifying transactions is the process of mining and will eventually result in revenue.
With cryptocurrencies there is a limited amount of coins or tokens, as opposed to physical currencies like the Australian Dollar where the The Reserve Bank of Australia can print unlimited amounts of money.
Mr Tan said the company have looked at mining Bitcoin, Ethereum and Monero and plan to sell them on the cryptocurrency market.
“Those would probably be the top three we focus on. They’re the larger coins, more stable and there’s less a risk in those coins than other coins. We probably will sell them to start with on the open market, the stock market, generally you don’t know who you are selling them to,” he said.
He said the farm would produce around 40 - 80 jobs from the start of construction which would take around six months and then about four ongoing full-time jobs.
“They would have to be locals because it just doesn’t make sense to resource it out of Perth. I’m trying to keep the community happy and I’m trying to build a new industry in the area so obviously there is always a bit of push back because it’s just something people don’t know enough and aren’t familiar with but I think in time people will see that this is a great thing for the community,” he said.
Shire of Collie president Sarah Stanley said the idea to bring a new industry into Collie was welcomed.
“The operation will take advantage of Collie’s strategic advantages in access to the power grid and good solar resources, but also introduces a brand new industry to our economy,” she said.
