A 127-year-old hydroelectric plant found its second life through Bitcoin mining

The Mechanicville Hydroelectric Plant was built in 1897. It survived two world wars, the Great Depression, and the dot-com bubble. The thing that nearly killed it was a wholesale electricity price of 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Now, thanks to Bitcoin mining, one of the oldest hydroelectric facilities in the United States is not just surviving. It’s thriving, reportedly generating roughly three times the profit it earned selling power to the National Grid.

From Edison-era turbines to SHA-256 hashes

Albany Engineering Corporation, led by CEO Jim Besha Sr., acquired the Mechanicville plant in 2003. That purchase came after a decade of litigation and significant operational disruptions that had left the facility’s future in doubt.

AEC got the plant running again, but the economics were brutal. Selling hydroelectric power to the grid at around 3 cents per kWh left thin margins for a facility that still operates with vintage 1890s equipment. The plant produces between 18 and 22 GWh of electricity annually from its roughly 5 MW of capacity.

In 2021, Besha made a pivot. AEC allocated about 4 MW of the plant’s 5 MW capacity to Bitcoin mining operations, keeping a small portion flowing to the grid while redirecting the vast majority of output toward running mining hardware on-site.

The result was a roughly threefold increase in profitability compared to grid sales alone. Instead of shipping cheap electrons to the National Grid at commodity prices, the plant effectively converts those electrons into Bitcoin, capturing far more value per kilowatt-hour.

Besha has described the mining setup as experimental, built with repurposed hardware rather than top-of-the-line ASICs.

Renewable mining with a pragmatic streak

The Mechanicville operation checks a box that Bitcoin’s critics often claim doesn’t exist: mining powered entirely by renewable energy. The plant runs on the flow of the Hudson River, the same water source it has tapped since the McKinley administration.

Besha, however, is no Bitcoin maximalist. He has said publicly that he prefers to convert mined proceeds into cash rather than hold Bitcoin on AEC’s balance sheet. He treats mining as an industrial revenue stream, not a speculative bet on Bitcoin’s price trajectory.

A model for stranded energy assets

The plant is a registered historic place and operates as something of a working museum. Visitors can see turbines and generators from the 1890s doing exactly what they were designed to do, just feeding a very different kind of load than their builders imagined.

As of 2026, no major changes to the mining operations have been reported since their 2021 launch, suggesting the setup has proved stable enough to continue without significant reinvestment.

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