[gjem97]

I'm pretty sure that you're joking, but it reminds me of the story of Microsoft (I think) running heaters in a datacenter to meet one of the technicalities of a power purchase agreement. I cant find a link right now (PR people have probably worked hard to obliterate it from the internet), but from what I recall, MS had a long-term power purchase agreement with a local utility that had both a minimum and maximum energy usage threshold for some time period. Facing contractual penalties if they did not reach the minimum, they essentially ran heaters outside the data center to use some extra energy. This was 10 years ago or so. I'd like to think that if this were today, someone would be willing to swoop in and use all that power to mine some bitcoins.

[rfugger]

It was tongue-in-cheek, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see someone do it. It's a pretty obvious way to cash in on cheap power if you can get access to it.