Paraguay's $350 Million Miner Power Contracts Expire at End of 2027

Paraguay's state power company plans to let every special contract it signed with crypto miners expire on 31 December 2027. ANDE has called the date improrrogable, meaning it cannot be extended. Those contracts sell electricity at a flat $44 per megawatt-hour, under five US cents a kilowatt-hour, with no annual adjustment, and the utility projects $350 million of revenue from miners this year. CoinDesk set out the sequence on Friday evening and updated it after midnight, drawing on ANDE planning documents, ABC Color's local reporting and the largest miner's annual report. Artificial-intelligence developers are signing for the same hydropower on far longer terms.

What the miners pay now

ANDE had about 944 megawatts contracted to miners as of April, roughly 13% of Paraguay's share of the Itaipu Dam, on figures the utility's then-president Felix Sosa gave ABC Color. Revenue from miners has climbed from about $100 million in 2024 to $295 million last year. Hashrate Index put the country fourth among mining jurisdictions, with about 4% of global mining power in the second quarter. Domestic demand is the pressure behind the deadline. Itaipu covered nearly 88% of Paraguay's consumption last year, and ANDE's transmission master plan projects national demand growing close to 8% a year through 2027.

The company with most of its fleet in one country

HIVE Digital Technologies, listed in New York and Toronto, has the most riding on the date. Its annual report for the year ended 31 March says both Paraguayan agreements, 200 megawatts at Yguazu and 100 at Valenzuela, run to 31 December 2027, and that continued operation will rely on renegotiating them. Roughly 77% of the 385 megawatts HIVE had in use on 30 April sat at those two sites. Gabriel Lamas, who runs HIVE's Paraguay operations, said in September that the company wanted at least ten more years and expected to pay ANDE $140 million this year. Asked about that figure this week, HIVE would not confirm it and said it does not break out electricity costs by country. Cash from the fleet also funds HIVE's own AI cloud business, part of a wider shift as miners turn to AI.

"We value that partnership, and out of respect for it, we don't comment on ongoing commercial discussions," Lamas told CoinDesk.

An auction with a floor of $56

ANDE's own engineers want the industry smaller and dearer. In July the Union de Ingenieros de la ANDE proposed capping data centers, AI and mining at 700 megawatts combined from 1 January 2028, with the power auctioned at a floor of $56 per megawatt-hour. That floor adds $12 to today's rate. On 21 October the group asked ANDE president Miguel Baez for a sealed-bid tender, and its worked example has bids clearing at $60, worth about $98 million a year more than miners pay now. Nothing has been adopted, and the 944 megawatts miners hold already exceed the whole proposed cap. Ethiopia showed this year how quickly the arithmetic can change when a state utility cuts miners to about a quarter of their contracted power.

Two accounts of the AI ramp

On 22 October ANDE signed a 15-year contract to supply up to 286 megawatts to Kuntur, a Paraguayan company tied to Araico, backer of a planned $12 billion AI campus at Yguazu. Supply starts at 6 megawatts on 1 December. The ramp after that is where the two accounts part. CoinDesk says the contract reaches 146 megawatts in April 2028, three months after the miners' deals end, while Coinpedia, writing on Saturday morning, says it reaches the full 286 megawatts by April 2029. They do not reconcile, and we could not establish which schedule the signed contract carries. Most of the Kuntur power averages $48.91 per megawatt-hour and rises annually with US inflation, about $5 above the miners' flat rate and $7 under the engineers' floor. Baez has reported pending requests for a further 6,300 megawatts, close to Paraguay's entire Itaipu share. ANDE and Araico did not answer CoinDesk's questions. Whether miners keep any of this power turns on a tender that does not yet exist. Just over 13 months remain.

Read also: IREN's AI Cloud Revenue Overtakes Mining as the Loss Hits $684M