[kevinak]

The article is wrong. They stopped their miners and thus freed up electricity to be used in other more acutely important industries. Bitcoin mining is very predictable and can be turned on and off at a moments notice. It works great as a grid stabilizer.

By making agreements with miners ERCOT can sell electricity cheaply during times of excess (where energy simply just goes into the ground) and in situations like these, they ask the miners to turn off their machines, preventing large spikes in electricity prices due to lack of supply. The question that should be asked is how much electricity did ERCOT sell to the miners?

Absolutely brilliant way to incentivice the build-out of cheap energy sources (wind, solar), since you always have a "buyer of last resort" - the bitcoin miners.