Compass Mining Georgia Hosting Sites Shutdown Due to 50% Power Spike

Bitcoin mining firm Compass Mining saw two of its third-party hosting facilities in Georgia shut down this week due to a 50% spike in electricity prices from local utility providers.

The company was notified on Wednesday that the owner would close the sites, a company spokesperson said. Meanwhile, he decided to move those miners to Texas in an effort to “minimize downtime.” CoinDesk covered the news earlier on Thursday.

Compass Mining hosts individual customer machines at facilities in the United States and Canada. It had 15 megawatts of electrical capacity at sites in Georgia.

“Client units are tentatively expected to be back online by September 30,” said an email to customers shared by the company on Wednesday. “Compass Mining will issue setup credits to offset hosting costs and associated downtime.”

Clients can also choose to take back their units, instead of having them redeployed.

The Texas site was recently revitalized, according to an update on August 20 stating that the first client miners should be deployed by August 23. The facility will have 100 megawatts and “Compass’s 25 megawatt (MW) allocation is expected to be live by the end of September,” the email also states.

Meanwhile, Compass is moving 100 miners from British Columbia to its plant in Labrador, also in Canada, because its hosting partner “is not maintaining performance standards at its facilities to the level that Compass requires”, the company said. “We have made the decision to relocate these miners and they will be resettled from next week.”

Over the past three months, the company has grappled with a lawsuit, layoffs and the resignation of its CEO and CFO. He sued one of his other hosting providers, located in Maine, in an attempt to recover his miners after claims of missed payments. A judge eventually granted Compass access to the machines, which the miner said had been held “hostage”.

Former Compass Mining CEO Whit Gibbs and Chief Financial Officer Jodie Fisher resigned in late June, with the company referring to “multiple setbacks and disappointments” standing in the way of its ultimate mission to “make mining easy and accessible.

A few days after the announcement, the company also reduced its workforce by 15% and reduced salaries by up to 50% in management positions.

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