Sound like a reasonable move
 
 
(excerpt from link by OP)
 
"The large power consumption requires supplemental power for residents and other companies, thus driving up cost. This is where the demand comes in to create a new tariff targeting digital coin miners."

rjohnson11
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/new-york-charging-higher-prices-cryptocurrency/
 
Companies and individuals digging for digital gold are consuming large amounts of power, which takes a toll on local power companies distributing electricity to residential homes and businesses. The commission notes that a single cryptocurrency mining “customer” can consume 33 percent of the local power company’s total load.

That's one TINY power company if a few megawatts OR PROBABLY LESS is 33% of the total load for that power company.
 
Also, most of New York State isn't exactly "low cost" power, though some of the hydro-heavy areas ARE cheap (and probably getting fed from Labrador or Quebec).
 
On the other hand, they seem to be following the lead of Chelan County WA on that "high density" concept, though they're not QUITE as stringent on the power level involved - and Chelan county IS  part of the "land of lowest cost power" in the US (along with Douglas and Grant counties next door) DESPITE their recent "high density" power rate enactment.
 

Normally areas with a lot of hydropower are shipping significant amounts of it OUT to other areas as they don't have enough "local demand" or even close.
100% the case with the big Columbia River power production dams (especially the Grand Coulee, probably 85-90% of the output of THAT dam is sent out to areas over 100 miles away, some of it goes several HUNDRED miles down into California) - I don't think ANY of those dams have 40% capacity demand in their local area with ONE exception (the one that fed the big Alcoa aluminum plant near Wenatchee WA, when Alcoa was RUNNING that plant - and Alcoa is STILL paying a lot of the cost for that dam as part of their long-term very cheap power contract with Chelan PUD even though that plant has been shut down for years) and *possibly* the Bonneville dam (which is ballpark 40 miles from Portland) as a second exception.
Also noted in many articles to be the case with that monster Three Gorges Dam in China (largest installed power capacity dam in the WORLD), as the "local industrial development" China expected to feed with that dam has been a lot slower to get built up than the Chinese government expected when they build that huge thing.
 
The down side of Hydropower - it's almost never able to be where it's really needed in large quantities, and where it IS available in large quantities is rarely high demand areas.
 

There are ZERO Cryptocoin operations in the US OR NORTH AMERICA that are using 100+ MW - the LARGEST to date would be MegaBigPower/GigaWatt and the're still working to get to the 30MW range total for ALL of their farm locations combined.
 
https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfury-is-building-the-largest-bitcoin-mining-operation-in-north-america/ will only hit 60 MW when fully in place, and Salcidio group is talking 42 MW when they're fully built out late this summer (3 locations in the Wenatchee area) but they're probably going to need longer than they plan based on feedback about Gigawatt's slower-than-planned growth and WHY.
 
The only INTERNATIONAL operations in that range were one Bitfury farm in Eastern Europe (announced, not built out all the way yet last time I checked) and *PROBABLY* Bitmain's big farm in China.
LW.COM might be in that ballpark for the combined total of their farms, but not on any farm in a single area.
 
KNC was supposed to be close to that range on their farm in Sweden if they had ever gotten it built out fully, but they went out of business before they got that far.
 
Very few US cryptocoin operations exceed 5 MW, most are quite a bit smaller - I can probably count the number in the 5 MW + range on my hands, and I doubt I need all the fingers - and I can probably DRIVE to all but 1 or 2 of them in a bit over an hour and in at least 2 cases less than a HALF hour.
 
 

Not quibbling about that, I'm just boggling about the TINY SIZE of at least one of those power companies and correcting the BADLY OVERSTATED consumption of big mining farms in the US.
 
For perspective on just HOW TINY a "3 Megawatt capacity power company is", the SMALLEST power production dam on the Columbia River in the US is rated at 660 Megawatts (Rock Island) and is one of *2* Columbia River power dams owned by Chelan COUNTY Public Utility District (the other one is rated over 1000 Megawatts, and they also own a small dam on a tributary that is rated for 58 Megawatts and dates back to 1927).
Chelan County PUD serves ballpark 75,000 people (it's a low pop density country except for Wenatchee and to a lesser degree Quincy) yet has almost 2000 Megawatts of rated power capacity (a large chunk of that is on long-term contract to Alcoa for a local area aluminum smelter/manufacturing facility).
 
Most coal-fired power plants are measured in 3 digit megawatts with a lot of them in the 2000 Megawatt AND MORE range (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_power_stations) though very very few if any are being built today in the US.
 
Natural gas GENERATORS are generally 2-digit or 3-digit megawatt PER GENERATOR (https://www.gepower.com/gas/gas-turbines) - note that the smallest generator on THAT list dates back DECADES to it's original version.
 
Even a SINGLE WIND-POWER MACHINE in the last decade has often been in the 2.5 Megawatt OR MORE range.
(https://www.gerenewableenergy.com/wind-energy/turbines/haliade-x-offshore-turbine) current largest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_Windpower - I used to live less than a mile from their factory) made the Liberty model that was first deployed in 2007.
 
Granted that's peak capacity for these generators, but Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids has had one of those Clipper Windpower "Liberty" generators in use on campus for several years now.
That's one COMMUNITY COLLEGE with 2.5 Megawatts of "nameplate power capacity".
 
I state again, a power company or utility district with a total 3MW capacity is TINY.
 

Lol...and now the utility companies are trying to leverage all this crypto mining BS to raise the cost of electricity for everyone else.
The average window box AC unit goes through MASSIVELY more electricity in a day than an array of 10 GPU's.
Turn on a hair dryer for a day and even more power.
 
Are they gonna start telling people when they are allowed to stay cool or dry their hair? Geez....
 
Please, use your friggin brains people and stop and think for a second before being guided down the garden path.