For months, residents of Greystone Manor estate in Sturgeon, Alberta, started hearing a strange noise from a nearby power plant that made sleeping difficult. What they didn’t expect to find is that Bitcoin mining operations are in their neighborhood.
Now, Link Global, the Bitcoin mining company behind the site, has been ordered by the provincial utility commission to shut down the two plants in Sturgeon. However, the company is complaining that by doing so, people will lose jobs, and the oil and gas facility it operates on will sit dormant.
People residing new the gas plant started hearing strange noises last fall, and the sound quickly becomes a topic of discussion. Little did they know that crazy noise was coming from a nearby natural gas plant?
Link Global, a Bitcoin mining company based in Vancouver, had set up four 1.25 MW gas generators at the site. The gas-powered thousands of computers that run mining operations. The mining operation started in August 2020, but the noise got annoying in by fall when it started operating at full capacity.
Link Global problem is failing to notify the county, neighbor, or provincial utility commission. Jeff Kocuipchyk, the president of Greystone Manor community, says that residents are frustrated that they were never consulted or notified.
“Nobody gave us a phone call saying ‘Hey. We’re going to do this. The lack of respect for being a good neighbor also added to the frustration of it all.”
Link Global CEO Stephen Jenkins acknowledges that the company did not follow the right way it hoped. Jenkins also admitted having learned about noise complaints later, prompting the company to set a team to measure decibel levels.
Jenkins adds that Link Global would do anything to make the resident of Greystone Manor Community happy even its means packing and going somewhere else. That is quite a surprise, but Link Global is prepared to relocate and operated within Alberta’s energy ecosystem.
