Operations

Curtailment and Demand Response

Why a whole row powers down on purpose - and why that is revenue, not a fault.

Load Down on Purpose

A whole row going dark during grid stress is usually the site selling its power back, not a fault. Curtailment = the site drops load on command to earn money or dodge a charge.

The grid operator or a contract pays the site more to stop mining than the coins would earn.
Firmware or ops drops a unit to near-zero watts in seconds; the fleet ramps back when the event clears.
The miners are fine. Nothing to RMA. The order came from ops.

Getting Paid to Power Down

Big sites run demand-response contracts. When the grid is short, they cut load and collect. In August 2023 Riot was paid $31.7M to power down over 95% of its load during a Texas heat wave.

Bucket	Amount	What for
Economic/power curtailment	~$24.2M	Sold power back / stopped during high prices
Demand-response credits	~$7.4M	Paid to be on-call to drop load
Total	$31.7M	One month (Aug 2023); Riot's rounded figures

4CP - Why Sites Drop Load in Summer

ERCOT sets a site's transmission charges for the NEXT year from its own load during summer's four highest 15-minute grid-wide peaks - the Four Coincident Peaks (4CP).

Get caught mining at full tilt during a 4CP interval -> higher transmission bill all next year.
So sites deliberately drop load during likely 4CP windows - hot summer afternoons.
You may see a planned curtail with no visible grid emergency. That is 4CP hedging, not a fault.

Curtail vs Throttle

Two different reasons a machine slows or stops. Do not confuse them.

Term	What happens	Why
Curtail	Stop or near-zero watts	Grid event / demand response
Throttle	Reduced hashrate or speed	Usually thermal or a power cap

A sudden fleet-wide or row-wide shutdown during grid stress or a heat wave is almost always intentional curtailment. Confirm with ops before chasing it as a fault - you will burn a shift troubleshooting a machine that was told to stop.