A TOU-IBT Pricing Strategy to Manage the Cryptocurrency Micro-Miners

Cryptocurrency mining device (CMD) is a plug-and-play device installed by any low-voltage customer to convert electrical energy to digital money. Recently, the significant increase in the price of digital currencies has persuaded residential customers in many countries to employ CMDs to obtain quick and easy profit. However, these rapidly evolving loads can cause a substantial increase in the coincident peak load of distribution networks. Therefore, it can threaten the safe and reliable operation of the network. A straightforward way to restrict the penetration rate of these home-based miners is to increase the electricity price such that this business becomes unprofitable; however, this solution affects the national regulations and is not practical in many countries. This paper proposes a practical electricity pricing strategy to manage the operation of cryptocurrency mining loads appropriately. This pricing strategy can change the miner’ threat to an opportunity to sell more electrical energy during the off-peak hours to these loads and to maximize the profit of the utility. The proposed strategy is studied using the load profile dataset obtained from the measurements of Tehran Electricity Distribution Company, and its effectiveness is demonstrated.