Of course, if you'd like to propose some less intrusive solution I'm sure both we and the people of Central Washington would be all ears.
It's because the way to fix a bad law is to pass another law. Otherwise you're saying we should keep the bad laws we have and work around it some other way.
Sometimes fixing the symptoms actually is better, but it's not surprising when people suggest changing the code.
Now they find they can't supply export power and local power because their crystal ball didn't predict there would be a power hungry technology moving in.
Since they sell excess above local prices, all local usage drives up local prices.
This would be different though, targeting a business to pay more than other commercial enterprises. That's a targeted disincentive, and if not structured generically and applied fairly it's bad policy. Seems hardly different than Comcast deliberately slowing Netflix down, not to extract revenue, but to put them out of business.
In this case, due to the fact that by taking the town's total usage up, they raise the costs for everyone in the town, you could also just see as internalizing an externality.
But yeah, raise the prices I say.
A-8: Yes, when a taxpayer successfully “mines” virtual currency, the fair market value of the virtual currency as of the date of receipt is includible in gross income. (...)
A-9: If a taxpayer’s “mining” of virtual currency constitutes a trade or business, and the “mining” activity is not undertaken by the taxpayer as an employee, the net earnings from self-employment (generally, gross income derived from carrying on a trade or business less allowable deductions) resulting from those activities constitute self-employment income and are subject to the self-employment tax.
But if the utilities are selling more of their power to local Bitcoin miners, they’re exporting less power at those premium prices, which makes it harder to keep local rates low. Further, because much of the surplus is currently committed in long-term contracts, supplying miners with all the megawatts they want might require the utilities do something virtually unprecedented: buy power on the open market, at prices far above what locals have come to expect.
Solution: pass a law to charge miners export prices. It’s not as though Bitcoin mining helps the local economy, so you either return revenues to pre-mining levels, or drive the leeches out. Either outcome is equivalent.