Hut 8 Mining Corporation Ramps Up Fight Against Power Supplier

The Bitcoin (BTC) miner Hut 8 Mining Corporation, which is located in Canada, has taken the struggle it has been having with the power supply for one of its mining sites to a higher level by filing a lawsuit in a court in Canada.

Hut 8 said on January 26 that it has submitted a Statement of Claim against Validus Power, an energy provider for a Hut 8 mining plant located in North Bay, Ontario. The lawsuit was brought in the Superior Court of Justice in the province of Ontario.

Since the beginning of November, these companies have been engaged in an ongoing dispute that stems from what Hut 8 claims is a failure by Validus to "meet its contractual responsibilities" under the power purchase agreement.

Hut 8 is seeking "monetary damages suffered as a consequence of the disagreement" and the implementation of certain elements according to the agreement signed by the two firms in its most recent lawsuit against the latter.

Late in 2021, Hut 8 and Validus began collaborating on several projects. Validus was the one that first supplied North Bay with 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity; however, that number climbed to around 100 MW by the end of 2021. Hut 8 was in charge of managing the project.

On November 9, Hut 8 served Validus with a notice of default, asserting that the latter had breached the terms of the power purchase agreement by failing to meet certain milestones by the dates specified in the agreement and by requiring that Hut 8 pay a higher price for the energy it purchased than what was specified in the agreement.

In the latter part of that month, Hut 8 sent an update in which it was disclosed that Validus had stopped delivering electricity to its North Bay location. Validus retaliated by sending Hut 8 its own default notice, in which it said that the latter had failed to pay for the electricity costs incurred by the former. Hut 8 refutes this assertion.

To this day, there has been no restart of business activity at the location. Hut 8 has said that it is investigating other options to lessen the effect of the dispute, including "organic and inorganic development potential."

According to an investor presentation from December, the North Bay location had 8,800 crypto mining rigs and a hash rate capacity of 0.84 exahashes per second (EH/s) before it was taken down. This accounted for more than one-fourth of the facility's overall output capacity.