Ethiopia Bitcoin Mining Power Cut: Supply Down to 23%

Ethiopian Electric Power has cut bitcoin miners to 23% of their contracted electricity. Bloomberg reported the cut on 15 September, quoting EEP’s CEO, Ashebir Balcha, who said deliveries were stepped down to 75%, then 50%, then 23%, with households and manufacturers supplied first. If you have machines on one of those sites, roughly three-quarters of the power you contracted for is gone, and the useful work now is finding out which of your units are losing it.

Where the 23% came from

Bloomberg reported that El Niño had cut inflows into Ethiopia’s hydroelectric reservoirs by about 20%, in a country where hydropower supplies roughly 95% of electricity, according to Bitcoin.com. EEP plans to reassess in October and has warned that miners could lose more supply, and that power exports to neighbouring countries could also be restricted, if the water does not improve. As of 9 October there had been no report of supply being restored.

Thirty-one of the 39 mining companies holding agreements were operating, per Bitcoin.com, and Ethiopia is reported to carry roughly 2.4% of the world’s hashrate. Mining takes roughly a third of national electricity output and, according to Bloomberg, accounted for around 35% of the utility’s revenue in the last fiscal year.

Reading the cut on your own fleet, and what to move

Your pool account will show how your host is handling the shortfall if each machine has its own worker name and you read them one by one rather than as a fleet total. A worker at zero for days is sending no shares: switched off, dead, or no longer connected, and the host can tell you which. A worker that alternates between full speed and nothing is on a rotation; if the host rotates in short blocks, the 10-minute chart shows it where the hourly one only shows a partial number. A worker holding steady well below its rating may be power-limited, though a dead hashboard or heat throttling looks much the same from the pool, so ask the host for a per-board reading on those units.

Workers at zero are the obvious candidates to move. For units on a rotation or a power limit, moving some of them only helps the ones that stay if your host hands the freed power to them, which depends on whether the host divides its allowance by machine slot or by customer, so settle that with the host before any shipment is planned.

Waiting for the October review is a reasonable choice if your own data shows most of your machines still getting hours. For the units that are dark, the timing depends on how they are cooled.

An air-cooled unit needs a rack and airflow, and goes live with us within 10 days of greenlight, with rack space ready and power provisioned. A hydro-cooled unit needs a closed coolant loop with manifolds and quick-disconnect couplings, specified for the model mix. Discovery and design take 4 to 8 weeks before contract, and the build another 4 to 12.

For a mixed fleet, ship the air units on the first available freight and start hydro discovery at the same time. Hydro units that are still getting hours in Ethiopia can stay there until the build date is close enough to cover freight out; dark hydro units wait the same 8 to 20 weeks wherever they are, so ship them whenever freight is easiest to arrange.

The Ethiopian leg, export documents and freight, is arranged by the site you are leaving and a forwarder, and moves at their pace. Ask the host for a list of serial numbers with a working status for each unit as part of the handover, so you can match every machine to it on arrival.

Hosting the units that move with us

UAE customs is cleared under our own registered broker code, and machines arrive at our intake site in Dubai. Air-cooled hosting has no minimum order, so a single machine can be hosted. We monitor hashrate and temperatures around the clock. If a board or PSU has failed in transit, the Al Ain repair centre sends a diagnosis and fixed estimate inside 24 hours, then waits for your approval before touching it.

Our 21 farms in the UAE and Oman carry 50 MW of active load, and the UAE has up to 4.5 MW free right now. A fleet larger than that needs planning with us before it ships.

Send the model list and unit counts on WhatsApp to +971 58 862 2898. A short call usually ends with a tier and a go-live date.

FAQ

Is Ethiopia restoring electricity to bitcoin miners?

No restoration had been reported by 9 October. EEP has tied its October review to reservoir levels.

Why did Ethiopia cut power to bitcoin miners?

Almost all of Ethiopia’s electricity is hydro, and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam alone produced about 52% of it last year, according to Bitcoin.com. With reservoir inflows down, EEP kept homes and manufacturers supplied first.

Does the 10-day go-live include shipping from Ethiopia?

No. The 10 days start at greenlight, with rack space ready and power provisioned at our site. Freight out of Ethiopia comes on top and depends on your host and forwarder.