Jellico Utilities CEO says Cleanspark bitcoin mining doesn't cause power surges

Cleanspark bitcoin mining is not causing power surges, said Jellico Utilities President and CEO Joe Carroll.

"The bitcoin — because I've heard some of them say that — they're not going to cause a power surge at your household," Carroll said. "They pull a steady voltage, and I've got the data on that, too. You can look at their load factor. They peak up to their demand, and they run 24/7 really steady."

Carroll spoke at the Jellico Utilities Authority meeting on July 28.

"A lot of times, especially if you have lightning strikes and it hits the power line, that can surge," Carroll said. "That's a true surge, but now if you have a power outage and the voltage dips, that's a power dip, not a surge. Components in your household — and keep in mind, we get a lot of people that will contact us and think that we owe them to replace all their appliances and things like that. There's no neglect on our part to be able to control a power surge. That's why we have an insurance company. When we turn it over to them, we're totally out of that. It's up to them whether or not they pay on a claim. It's out of our hands, but any kind of lightning strikes, even equipment failures, that's not the utilities' issue. Customers still hook up to the grid at their own choice. Now if we're negligent and we hook up the wrong transformer and burn everything up in your household, that would be taken care of. That's negligence, and our men would be responsible for that. But equipment failure or a lightning strike or if you lose ground in your household and you're not grounded well and you're having stray voltages, that's on the customer, unfortunately. You can imagine that's why you have homeowner's insurance, as well."