Renewable energy-focused Bitcoin mining company Iris Energy is planning to increase its total hash rate to 10 exahashes per second (EH/s) by 2024 with the addition of new Bitmain T21 mining machines. The company has announced the purchase of an additional 1.6 EH/s worth of Bitmain T21 mining machines to be delivered in the second quarter of 2024 and currently has a capacity of 5.6 EH/s as of December 2023.
Iris Expands Operations
The latest generation mining hardware from Chinese-based mining machine manufacturer Bitmain will also improve the efficiency of Iris’s operations from 29.5 joules per terahash (J/TH) to 24.8 J/TH. Iris has invested $22.3 million for its latest order from Bitmain and has priced the hardware at $14 per terahash.
The mining company expects to boost its mining capacity by 1.4EH/s in the first quarter, reinforcing its previous Bitmain S21 miner order. It is also expecting another group of Bitmain T21 miners that will increase its capacity by an additional 1.3 EH/s.
Iris announced in June 2023 that it will expand its Childress data center operations in Texas by 80 megawatts (MW). The company noted that additional operational capacity is expected to be delivered starting from January 2024 and the acquisition of new hardware from Bitmain will allow increasing the operational hash rate up to 10 EH/s. The company is also planning to construct another 100 MW data center on the site, a development that will be made possible with the provision of the already available 500 MW of additional power capacity for operations.
Bitcoin Production with Renewable Energy
Although Iris primarily focuses on Bitcoin mining, it has started to expand its data center to serve the increasing demand for productive artificial intelligence computations. In August, Iris invested $10 million to purchase 248 units of the latest technology Nvidia H100 GPUs, which are planned to be delivered by the end of 2023.
The company currently operates data center facilities in different regions of North America, including Canal Flats, Mackenzie, Prince George in British Columbia, Canada, and the Childress facility in Texas.
Iris states that it uses 100% renewable energy at all four centers and that the data centers generate power from a mix of wind, solar, and hydroelectric resources. A report on their website highlights that the three Canadian facilities produce 98% of their energy from renewable sources. The remaining energy usage is balanced by purchasing renewable energy certificates.