Nodal Power raises $13M to power bitcoin mining centers with flared methane

Nodal Power is looking to ramp up its practice of converting methane gas from landfills to electricity to power bitcoin mining data centers.

The company closed on a $13 million raise this week to continue its activities in that sector, executives said on Monday. 

Methane is a byproduct of decomposition organic matter in landfills, which contributes to global warming. Nodal Power’s bitcoin-focused pitch is that the company takes that leaking methane gas and puts it to use. 

“When a landfill gets big enough, the EPA requires landfills to capture and collect those gases,” Nodal Power co-founder and chief operating officer Matthew Jones told Blockworks. “We take that gas, clean it, dry it, compress it, and use it [to] generate electricity to either send up on the wires to the grid or to power an on-site datacenter.”

KPMG in a recent report found that methane gas flaring could actually cut down on methane emissions — if enough companies buy into the practice. 

The report claimed that there’s enough flared methane in the US and Canada to power the entire Bitcoin network.

Nodal Power owns, operates and energizes two mining data centers around the US, with a third expected to come online in early 2024. It also owns and operates the power plants that are routing electricity to the data centers, according to Jones.

The first site is the smallest, with a hashing power of 15 petahashes per second (PH/s) and resides in the southwestern United States.

It has 3.2 megawatts (MW) of generation and 160 miners, but the bitcoin mining operation is a secondary priority. More often, Nodal Power is exporting the electricity generated by landfill gas to the local power utility — presumably for a profit. 

“Site 1…often does not use the data center because grid economics favor export of the electricity instead of on-site use,” Jones told Blockworks. 

The second site is located in the “mountain west,” according to Nodal Power and is the bigger of the two operational data centers. It’s operating at 1.6 MW with a hashing power of 50 PH/s. Again, landfill gas powers its 500 miners. 

The third — the focus of the $13 million of funding — will be “identical” to the second site in terms of the power and the mining footprint, Jones said. 

Jones couldn’t confirm how many miners would be at the new data center, but estimated it would be operating at 60-70 PH/s. 

Nodal Power raised the $13 million from a group of high net worth individuals, as well as friends and family. The company declined to disclose a valuation.

Among the company’s angel investors: Stance Socks’ Clarke Miyasaki, and Chris Bennett, founder and chairman of marketing agency 97th Floor. 

There were 10 other investors, according to Nodal Power, many of whom are said to work outside of crypto. 

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