publish date 2026-07-23
Welcome back! This is Canaan's weekly newsletter on Bitcoin mining, energy, and compute infrastructure.
On June 30, the Department of Energy signed an emergency order authorizing PJM to direct backup generation at large customer sites as a last resort before firm load shedding. PJM's application defined the covered sites as those with at least 50 MW of peak load at a delivery point. The order ran through July 3. DOE then issued another on a July 13 application, following comparable orders in January and May.
On July 9, the Public Utility Commission of Texas unanimously approved something that sounds like the opposite. Its new ride-through rules require large computational loads to stay connected through voltage and frequency excursions instead of protecting themselves by dropping offline. ERCOT's reasoning is worth sitting with: when several thousand megawatts of compute detect the same sag and trip at once, the sudden loss of demand becomes itself a reliability event.
What the grid is asking for is not constant consumption, but controlled behavior: remain stable through momentary disturbances, reduce withdrawals when instructed, and return in a coordinated way.
The stakes behind the rulemaking are visible in the queue. Developers have requested studies for more than 438 GW of large load in ERCOT, nearly 90% of it data centers, against a record peak of 85,508 MW set in August 2023. ERCOT is careful to say the queue is not a forecast. What gets built is a triage system: batch studies and connection pathways for customers willing to accept curtailment under defined constraints.
FERC is running the same play nationally. Its June 18 show-cause orders directed all six jurisdictional RTOs and ISOs to justify or rewrite how large and co-located loads interconnect, and floated new transmission services for loads willing and able to limit their withdrawals. The responses are due August 17.
So flexibility is being procured right now through emergency orders and reliability mandates rather than through prices. Some may say that is the wrong order of operations.
It is worth naming the ceiling, too. Princeton's ORFEUS modeling of 22 GW of new data center load in a 2030 Texas grid found that curtailing 0.5% of the year cut costs sharply in the targeted hours but reduced average system cost by under 5%.
At the end of the day, flexibility is a physical capability before it is a contract term. Ramp rate, restart time, thermal tolerance and the granularity of the turn-down are set by the machines, the power electronics, the cooling design, the firmware and the site controls.
Which is where bitcoin mining sits differently from most large loads. There is no queued job to lose, no customer waiting on a response, nothing spoiling in the tank when the machines slow down. The work can wait so that the load can move. And because power tuning happens per unit, it moves gradually rather than all at once.
Canaan has exposure at both layers: it designs the machines that determine load granularity and power tuning, and it operates fleets subject to the grid’s evolving requirements.
Canaan’s North American non-JV fleet averaged 17.9 J/TH at the end of June. Across the company’s non-JV mining portfolio, its average all-in power cost for the month was $0.043/kWh. The company’s West Texas joint venture sites sit in the market that just wrote the ride-through rules. Not too far from these sites, Gwyn Lauber will be digging into this tomorrow. At the Energy Investors Forum, she will join JohnPaul Baric of MiningStore, Brad Cuddy of Cholla Inc., and Taras Kulyk of Synteq to discuss How Digital Infrastructure Can Stabilize the Grid.
In the News
Network at a Glance
Project Spotlight
The A3205 was Canaan's 16nm SHA-256 ASIC, and it carried the A10 family across its range - the 1026, 1041 and 1047 as well as the 1066 and 1066 Pro, with variants such as the A3205N appearing on different hash board designs. In the 1066, 342 A3205 dies delivered 50 TH/s at roughly 3,250W, rated at 63 J/TH at 25°C and 65 J/TH at 35°C. Solid numbers for late 2019, and the generation Canaan carried into its Nasdaq listing that November.
The A10 machines shipped with a Kendryte K210 as the smart controller - Canaan's own RISC-V AI system-on-chip, the same silicon the company was then selling into edge-AI vision applications. That was a bitcoin miner supervised by an AI processor, in 2019, years before the industry started saying "AI" on earnings calls.
Follow and Contact Us
Disclaimer: This newsletter shares industry commentary and third-party news for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by third-party sources are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Canaan Inc. For official news, please refer to Canaan’s press releases and SEC filings at https://investor.canaan-creative.com/.
On June 30, the Department of Energy signed an emergency order authorizing PJM to direct backup generation at large customer sites as a last resort before firm load shedding. PJM's application defined the covered sites as those with at least 50 MW of peak load at a delivery point. The order ran through July 3. DOE then issued another on a July 13 application, following comparable orders in January and May.
On July 9, the Public Utility Commission of Texas unanimously approved something that sounds like the opposite. Its new ride-through rules require large computational loads to stay connected through voltage and frequency excursions instead of protecting themselves by dropping offline. ERCOT's reasoning is worth sitting with: when several thousand megawatts of compute detect the same sag and trip at once, the sudden loss of demand becomes itself a reliability event.
What the grid is asking for is not constant consumption, but controlled behavior: remain stable through momentary disturbances, reduce withdrawals when instructed, and return in a coordinated way.
The stakes behind the rulemaking are visible in the queue. Developers have requested studies for more than 438 GW of large load in ERCOT, nearly 90% of it data centers, against a record peak of 85,508 MW set in August 2023. ERCOT is careful to say the queue is not a forecast. What gets built is a triage system: batch studies and connection pathways for customers willing to accept curtailment under defined constraints.
FERC is running the same play nationally. Its June 18 show-cause orders directed all six jurisdictional RTOs and ISOs to justify or rewrite how large and co-located loads interconnect, and floated new transmission services for loads willing and able to limit their withdrawals. The responses are due August 17.
https://x.com/matthew_sigel/status/2067289853444657174?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2067289853444657174%7Ctwgr%5E620093502873931c2b5500e87c9af80d83c8a00d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcanaan-newsletter.beehiiv.com%2Fp%2Flearning-to-flex-on-command
So flexibility is being procured right now through emergency orders and reliability mandates rather than through prices. Some may say that is the wrong order of operations.
It is worth naming the ceiling, too. Princeton's ORFEUS modeling of 22 GW of new data center load in a 2030 Texas grid found that curtailing 0.5% of the year cut costs sharply in the targeted hours but reduced average system cost by under 5%.
At the end of the day, flexibility is a physical capability before it is a contract term. Ramp rate, restart time, thermal tolerance and the granularity of the turn-down are set by the machines, the power electronics, the cooling design, the firmware and the site controls.
Which is where bitcoin mining sits differently from most large loads. There is no queued job to lose, no customer waiting on a response, nothing spoiling in the tank when the machines slow down. The work can wait so that the load can move. And because power tuning happens per unit, it moves gradually rather than all at once.
Canaan has exposure at both layers: it designs the machines that determine load granularity and power tuning, and it operates fleets subject to the grid’s evolving requirements.
Canaan’s North American non-JV fleet averaged 17.9 J/TH at the end of June. Across the company’s non-JV mining portfolio, its average all-in power cost for the month was $0.043/kWh. The company’s West Texas joint venture sites sit in the market that just wrote the ride-through rules. Not too far from these sites, Gwyn Lauber will be digging into this tomorrow. At the Energy Investors Forum, she will join JohnPaul Baric of MiningStore, Brad Cuddy of Cholla Inc., and Taras Kulyk of Synteq to discuss How Digital Infrastructure Can Stabilize the Grid.
In the News
- Hut 8 Jumps 14% on $9.8 Billion Lease to Fully Commercialize Texas AI Campus
- IREN Secures $2.8 Billion in AI Cloud Contracts, Raises 2026 Revenue Target
- Braiins, Enel Launch Energy Tool as Bitcoin Mining Margins Tighten
- Keel Advances 96 MW Quebec AI Data Center With Sherbrooke Approval
- Soluna Hires Microsoft Data Center Executive Ryan Carver to Lead AI Buildout
- Nebius Secures $775M GPU-Backed Loan to Fund AI Cloud Expansion
Network at a Glance
- BTC price (USD): ~$65,792
- Network hashrate: 880 EH/s
- Difficulty: 127.17T
- Hashprice: ~$32.79 / PH / day
Project Spotlight
The A3205 was Canaan's 16nm SHA-256 ASIC, and it carried the A10 family across its range - the 1026, 1041 and 1047 as well as the 1066 and 1066 Pro, with variants such as the A3205N appearing on different hash board designs. In the 1066, 342 A3205 dies delivered 50 TH/s at roughly 3,250W, rated at 63 J/TH at 25°C and 65 J/TH at 35°C. Solid numbers for late 2019, and the generation Canaan carried into its Nasdaq listing that November.
The A10 machines shipped with a Kendryte K210 as the smart controller - Canaan's own RISC-V AI system-on-chip, the same silicon the company was then selling into edge-AI vision applications. That was a bitcoin miner supervised by an AI processor, in 2019, years before the industry started saying "AI" on earnings calls.
Follow and Contact Us
- X: @canaanio
- Youtube: Canaanmining
- LinkedIn: Canaan Inc.
- Website: canaan.io
- Support: Customer Care
Disclaimer: This newsletter shares industry commentary and third-party news for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by third-party sources are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Canaan Inc. For official news, please refer to Canaan’s press releases and SEC filings at https://investor.canaan-creative.com/.
