A Survey of Different Methods for Miner Detection and Challenges of Them in Power Industries

Cryptocurrency mining requires high consumption power. In recent years, because of the increase in the price of cryptocurrencies and due to the cheap price of electricity in Iran, mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been very profitable. Some miners are legally engaged in cryptocurrency mining, but many miners do it illegally and without permission. Since cryptocurrency mining is an operation that consumes a lot of electricity, it is one of the reasons for the lack of electricity, especially in the summer season, and it has caused power outages and financial losses to various industries. In this paper, different methods of detection of illegal mining are reviewed. In this research, by collecting the small number of researches done in the world, a comprehensive study of this issue has been tried. The methods of identifying miners and related consumers are divided into several different categories. Some of them are based-on data mining and mostly to identify consumers who use the output of the converter for the miner device. The second category is related to people who illegally get their electricity from behind the meter or unmetered branches, which are much more difficult to identify than the first type. These methods will be mentioned more in this article. Finally, some suggestions are provided for better identification of these consumers. Furthermore, at the end of the paper, some renewable and new sources of electrical power are discussed for using as an electricity power for miners instead of traditional fossil fuel and gas planes.