Australia is turning to cheap and clean renewable for powering cryptocurrency mining and other traditional IT services. Australian authorities have granted permission for the construction of 20 MegaWatt solar farm in the mining town of Collie, near the Australian city of Perth.

DC Two, a data centre operator, and its subsidiary, D Coin, are the companies behind the clean initiative. The solar farm will be built by Hadouken.

The aim behind building country’s first solar-powered “behind-the-grid data center” is to provide highest density data at the lowest cost.

“By providing customised low cost hosting options specifically engineered for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin mining at globally competitive rates, DC Two & D Coin have been able to attract the interest of both the local and international crypto mining community,” the company said.

According to estimations, a crypto mining configuration powered by 4 MW of power is capable of mining 650 bitcoins in one year which approximately amounts to $ 4.45 million.

“In complete crypto mining configuration, using the initial 4MW power availability, the data centre could mine about 650 bitcoins per annum worth around A$6 million based on current mining and exchange rates” the company claimed.

The first unit of the farm will be functional early next year. The data centre will consist of two hosts- one for crypto mining hosting business by D Coin and other for DC Two’s data centre services.

The company still needs power from coal to meet the energy requirements of crypto mining.

“Power will be delivered as a mix, more solar during the day and at the moment, coal during other hours. We do not have information or estimates at this stage as to specific ratio/proportion of solar versus coal delivery,“ said Rebecca Thomas of DC Two. “We’re really excited to be able to have the opportunity to work with a solar farm to do what we can with renewables and with time, extend the renewable proportion as technology allows.“