Greenidge Generation Holdings Inc., a bitcoin miner backed by private equity firm Atlas Holdings LLC, announced a major expansion Oct. 21, more than doubling a recent order with Bitmain Inc. to 22,500 units, and entering agreements for thousands of megawatts for possible new data centers in Texas.

The company announced that it was entering an agreement for a development pipeline of at least 2,000 MW of capacity in Texas and another agreement with a company controlling 1,000 MW of power generation in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc. market, according to a news release from the company. Greenidge has signed a $15 million agreement to acquire a 175-acre site from LSC Communications in Spartanburg, S.C., including more than 750,000 square feet of industrial buildings. That deal is expected to close in early December. LSC is a portfolio company of private investment funds managed by Atlas Holdings, according to Greenidge.

"Increasing our order with Bitmain brings our current and committed miner capacity to over 130 MW and [a hash rate of 4.1 exahashes per second] delivering in the next 12 months," CEO Jeff Kirt said in a statement Oct. 21. The site development efforts the company announced are part of its plans to expand in North America beyond its site in New York, hoping for more flexibility and redundancy through multiple sites, Kirt added.

Greenidge is evaluating more than 3,000 MW of options in Texas and South Carolina to determine the best locations for development, but in all, it expects to deploy 22,500 miners ordered from Bitmain over the last six weeks at one or more of those locations.

Those 22,500 miner units are expected to be delivered in the second and third quarters of 2022, the company said. In total, Greenidge has about 29,000 miners on order from Bitmain, delivering between now and the third quarter of 2022. Once deployed, those miners are expected to bring the company's total mining capacity to about 44,950 miners "representing 4.1 [exahashes per second] and 130 MW of capacity," the company said.

Greenidge owns and operates data centers for bitcoin mining and blockchain services. The company also generates and distributes electricity at its 106-MW Greenidge gas-fired power plant in New York, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

The company expects it will have electrical capacity for more than 500 MW by 2023 and plans to "continue to offset 100% of the carbon emissions associated with its mining operations at all current and future locations." The company operates 45 MW of mining capacity at its Dresden, N.Y. site and plans to continue operating there. Once the expansions are developed, the company said it would provide redundancy to absorb its current site's planned mining capacity at other locations, if necessary.