Optimization of Cryptocurrency Mining Demand for Ancillary Services in Electricity Markets

Abstract

We model the operation of a cryptocurrency mining facility with heterogeneous mining devices participating in ancillary services as an optimization problem. We propose a general formulation for the cryptominers to maximize their profit by strategically participating in ancillary services and controlling the loss of mining revenue, which requires taking into account the disparity in the efficiency of the mining machines. The optimization formulation is considered for both offline and online scenarios, and optimal algorithms are proposed to solve these problems. As a special case of our problem, we investigate cryptominers' participation in frequency regulation, where the miners benefit from their fast-responding devices and contribute to grid stability. Simulation results based on real-world Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) traces show more than 20\\% gain in profit, highlighting the advantage of our proposed algorithms.