Things going on

- IREN, Childress Co., Texas -

I didn't get on here in time to announce the special meeting held by Fisher County Commissioners this morning, but it's online at the Double Mountain Chronicle facebook page, if you'd like to watch it. It will also be posted on the Fisher County Courthouse Texas YouTube site.

I drove up to the Childress area to check out the IREN bitcoin mining project going on there. First I drove through a new solar construction zone, mistaking it for the IREN site. There's a lot of building going on in that area, around a community called Kirkland, but Childress County has a lot of space, and these huge projects seem to take up a small portion of it when looking at all that sky.

Between Childress and Guthrie, Guthrie and Aspermont, there is restful landscape to lay the eye on from horizon to horizon. I stopped in Paducah, between Childress and Guthrie, and got a cheeseburger from the Dairy Maid. There's more fries comes with that order than I can eat. Reminds me of the old days (1970's).

There's some activity going on out by the Wetsel Substation, where IREN has bought property for the Fisher County bitcoin mining project. It's just north of where the Claytonville gas plant used to be.

So, while I was looking to the left, something else was happening on my right. In Sweetwater, a data storage facility has been installed on Sam Houston Street. Veribi has a much smaller operation than IREN. I don't even know if it's the same product. If you stop at the 1 1/2 acre site and listen, it sounds like a giant evaporative cooler.

My guess is that there are some lucrative government subsidies for this industry, much like that for the windmills and solar farms. Chances are they'll be popping up everywhere, big and small.

One other thing, the Dollar General in Roby has opened. That is massive progress in this county and brings a department store a few more miles closer to my house.

IREN presents project information

Today, at the Fisher County Commissioners meeting, representatives from IREN came before the court to introduce themselves and to discuss a possible tax abatement for a project they want to set up in the county. Jason Date, Michael Leamons and Nicole Dill gave their spiel and promised jobs, retail sales and donations to local groups to make the project more lucrative. It sounds like what they want from the county is large, open land and an easy hook-up into electric transmission lines. 

Jason described the company as a sustainable data center. I got excited because I thought it meant all the county records would be in a huge, searchable database. I was wrong.

IREN is a bitcoin mining company. An article from the New Scientist website, written by Matthew Sparkes, gives a pretty good description of bitcoin.

More important is the definition of a data center. It's a large, temperature-controlled warehouse filled with computers, according to a Science for Georgia document. 

IREN has a project going in Childress. There is a video detailing the path to making that deal.

The company has already obtained several hundred acres in Fisher County, around the Wetsel Substation on FM 611, under the name IE US Development Holdings 5.

Looking over the internet, I couldn't figure out whether to be pro or con. Some say the data centers use too much energy and have a lot of emissions. Others say the data centers stabilize the electric grid by keeping energy expectations at a steady level. That is evidently done by using more electricity, that would otherwise be wasted, during slack periods, while using less electricity when energy is needed by other consumers, like during a heatwave or cold snap.

Soon we might be adding another line to our county industry banner: cattle, cotton, oil, wind energy, solar energy and bitcoin mining.

NASDAQ:IREN