> I don't get why the law separates between connected and disconnected power plants?

Assuming they made an exception for private plants that belong to a campus of some sort. Many airports, universitys, housing projects, water treatment facilities, prisons, data centers, etc, run their own power plants primarily for heating and cooling needs with the added benefit of 24/7 onsite power in case of a blackout. They may be grid tied and export some power but are not primary grid suppliers like a utility.

Why should those private plants get an exception? All you jave done is provide a "who", not a "why".

Partially it is a scale thing. The state only has so many inspectors, so if you limit the law to large industrial users you don't need to have inspectors driving around to tens of thousands of tiny single-use boilers inspecting them for environmental requirements they would never be able to afford in the first place.

Then it seems like scale should be part qualifying for the exemption. In this case the power plant is absolutely at a large enough scale that it should be regulated.

> Why should those private plants get an exception?

Ask the law makers who wrote it.

> All you jave done is provide a "who", not a "why".

The word "private" is the "why".

If you want an analogy: Do you follow food safety and preparation laws or submit to inspection in your private kitchen before making yourself breakfast? No. Because it's private.

You analogy is completely inaccurate and flawed. "Private" commercial kitchens (e.g. on campuses) absolutely have to follow food safety regulations.

I wouldn't be surprised if the law dated back to electrification and specifically existed to grandfather in mills that had independent electrical supplies before the grid was established - like a textile mill with a water wheel that hooked the axle up to a generator.

Remember too that AC vs. DC was very much up in the air in the early days of electricity so any early investors in generators would have to gamble on which standard would win for transmission and some of them would end up being incompatible with the grid unless they installed transformers. A sane government would want to allow those early adopters to keep using what they've got until it breaks and not penalize those companies for investing in new technology.

Probably because the owners, operators, and/or manufacturers of generating equipment lobbied to get excluded. It's the same reason why emissions regulations apply specifically to reciprocating engines only up to a certain threshold of displacement per cylinder: it exempts the products of Caterpillar.

The law likely didn't consider disconnected power plants, as why would such a thing exist? I guess the only reason before bitcoin is a self-contained power plant to run a self-contained facility, and even those (like a datacenter) are often grid tied with the power plant as a backup.

> The law likely didn't consider disconnected power plants, as why would such a thing exist?

I think the point is that why would the law make the distinction anyway? Like why would it say "power plants connected to a power grid pay X tax"? Why wouldn't it just say "power plants pay X tax"?

A sibling comment points out a reasonable explanation for why non-connected power plants might be exempt from tax, though.

I think this is an example of capitalism finding exploits in the legal system. We should try to patch this one quickly.

I don't think people realize how much of things like the tax code are basically code patches to law to fix exploitable bugs.

Capitalism isn't exploiting anything. People make the laws, people operate businesses.

It isn't clear to me that these concerns are absent under any other system -- in fact I would argue that capitalism paired with a liberal representative democracy and strong individual rights is the best system for addressing any concerns.

I don't think capitalism is "wrong" for finding an exploit, but those liberal representative democracies should realize that turning retired power plants into miners is bad, and pass laws to prevent that business model from working.

Why impugn "capitalism" when you could have just said that the business model has negative consequences that should be addressed via legislation?

I was reacting to the non-sequitur that you were suggesting that somehow capitalism was at fault in this situation.