Crypto miner Hut 8 blames "power surges" on slow repairs at Alberta facility

Company is only operating at 15 percent capacity

Cryptocurrency miner Hut 8 Mining said that efforts to fix equipment at its Drumheller, Alberta, data center in Canada were taking longer than expected, due to power surges.

The company first reported that high energy input levels damaged equipment at the Canadian site in March, bringing its operational hash rate down to 15 percent of optimal levels.

At the time, it said that it had brought in additional repair staff, procured new hardware, and expected to return to full force within 10-12 weeks.

Now, however, it has admitted that it will be unable to meet that deadline. “Progress in bringing the equipment back online has been slower than expected given frequent curtailments and hardware failures due to power surges,” the company said. “As individual miner hashboards are repaired and re-installed, other hashboards are failing and require repair, which is impairing our hashrate and production.”

CEO Jaime Leverton added: "While the re-energization at Drumheller has been challenging, our team continues to show grit and perseverance and is making progress."

Hut 8 is in the midst of merging with U.S. Bitcoin Corp., creating a company with up to 825MW of potential IT capacity.

The company claims to operate over 36,000 square feet (3,345 sqm) of data center space in North America, not including US Bitcoin. It has also tried to branch out beyond crypto, and said that it recently signed a five-year agreement with an undisclosed government client for high-performance computing.