Pircher, Y. (2025). Repowering Hydro : Improving business cases in Austria with Bitcoin mining [Master Thesis, Technische Universität Wien]. reposiTUm. https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2025.137147
The hydropower fleet in Austria is ageing and needs to be modernised to adapt to changing conditions in national and international energy systems. The financial viability of hydropower repowering projects remains a challenge because of high investment costs and long payback periods. A part from additional revenuestreams, a Bitcoin mining operation has the potential to be used as a flexible demand source also for curtailment and grid stability services. This thesis provides quantitative evidence on whether a Bitcoin mining operation can serve as an additional revenue stream to improve the investment metrics of a hydro repowering project in Austria, using a dynamic investment calculation and sensitivity analysis.The results show that Bitcoin mining can improve the financial performance especially for run-of-river plants with higher full load hours. These positive effects are sensitive to the volatility of the Bitcoin price and the network hash rate, making long-term returns difficult to predict.
