Whatever the cause for increased demand, the fastest/cheapest/easiest way to increase generation, was to restart recently closed coal power plants.

The bitcoin trade was rather stable over the years, it went off 10 years earlier. It’s more lijely it has something to do with delayed scaling efforts due to the pandemic (remember streaming providers limiting quality for a while? We hit max capacity). Scaling up datacenters takes time, however it’s still faster than scaling up energy production. Add to that the fact we had the AI bubble beginning to blow up in 2020 / 2021 with projections probably causing managers and techbros to scramble for even more capacity as well as everyone returning to work and we have the perfect situation for a crazily high, somewhat unexpected demand in power.

At least unexpected enough for energy companies.