Michael Savuskan, CEO of Alpha Miner, used his State of the Power Supply 2023 keynote at Mining Disrupt Miami 2023, recorded July 25–27, 2023, to walk through how miner power supplies had changed in about four years: from fixed-output units that could run any machine, to variable-output designs tied to particular manufacturers, and on to immersion, hydro and three-phase units. Bitcoin was trading at $29,137 when he spoke. Today the price is $83,316.
He started with where the industry had been only a few years earlier. Units like the APW3 and APW7 powered miners from several manufacturers, and their features were simple by 2023 standards but advanced for the time. Output was fixed, usually at 12 volts, and the units were interchangeable as long as the wattage matched. Whether the hardware came from Canaan or Bitmain, the same power supply could run it.
When a house fire changed mining compliance
That interchangeable era is also where Alpha Miner began, and Savuskan told the story as an anecdote. He was working for a large industrial miner in Upstate Washington when a fire broke out in a residential house. Someone had been mining at home without a good setup; the house burned and took a couple of neighbors with it. The city wanted to act, but a residence is difficult to go after, so it went after the largest miners in the area instead.
A fire inspector came on board with a condition: the operation's power supplies had to carry UL certification, which the APW3 units of the day did not have.
we're gonna shut you down unless your power supplies have a UL certification which APW threes at the time did not have
Michael Savuskan · 1:57
Management asked Savuskan to find a replacement with the certificate. A UL-certified power supply in the United States then cost roughly $350, and the farm ran 30,000 miners, which he called a considerable amount of money. His answer was to spec, source and produce the power supplies in China at a fraction of the US cost. Those units were named Alpha Miner, and that is how the company started.
He added that he still thinks warmly of those old fixed-output supplies, and that they remain in production. Alpha Miner still makes tens of thousands of them every year and ships them by the container to places such as Venezuela, where S9s and similar miners are still running on cheap power.
The end of the universal plug
The break came in November 2018, when Bitmain released the S11. Savuskan described it as the first commercially produced miner to use a power supply with variable output. The range was small, only 10 to 11 volts, and the S11 was not an especially popular model, but the output was variable, and that opened a new chapter.
unleashed the era of a modern power supply where we have a variable output
Michael Savuskan · 3:33
Every manufacturer adopted variable output, but each took a different route. Bitmain kept the power supply independent from the miner, which is why a number of manufacturers, Alpha Miner among them, now produce aftermarket power supplies for Bitmain machines such as the S17 and S19. Canaan developed one power supply and stuck with it: every Canaan unit from the 10 series up to the current 13 series runs on a supply with the same firmware, so they are basically interchangeable depending on the setup.
MicroBT chose a third road. It updates the firmware in the power supply at the same time it updates the firmware in the miner, and if the power supply is not recognized during that update it is bricked. That, Savuskan said, is why no aftermarket power supplies exist for MicroBT's miners.
Special-application supplies: immersion and hydro
The other trend Savuskan pointed to was the spread of special-application power supplies. He claimed a world first for Alpha Miner in designing a power supply built specifically for immersion, back in 2019, built for the S9 and for Canaan's immersion boards, and that it was also first to release a special power supply for the S19, about a year before the talk. By 2023, he said, immersion power supplies were fairly common and a few companies produced them.
Hydro cooling brought its own category. The hydro power supply is three-phase, and Alpha Miner was using the show to display its first three-phase hydro power supply, with an invitation to anyone interested to stop by the booth.
Why single-phase power has hit its ceiling
Turning to the future, Savuskan argued that single-phase power supplies have reached their limit. Alpha Miner had released its 9,500-watt unit the year before, and he said that is about as high as single-phase can go. The first constraint is the connector: each is limited to 20 amps, and two connectors at 20 amps each give a maximum of about 9,600 watts. Going higher would require a third connector, which he did not consider a good way forward.
single phase power supplies that we have right now are pretty much at their limit
Michael Savuskan · 6:25
The second constraint sits in the network. The higher a single-phase supply goes in wattage, the more trouble it causes with harmonics and noise. Even at 9,500 watts he called it a challenge, and said that going higher is pretty much impossible with single-phase.
Three-phase: a cost for old farms, a saving for new ones
The only way up, in his view, is three-phase development, with miners connected at 350, 480 or 520 volts, whatever the local grid provides. That removes the harmonics problem and makes the supply very stable. It is also why he cared about the hydro unit: in his words, it is not the hydro that matters, it is the three-phase.
connecting the miners 350 480 520 volts whatever the power grid you have
Michael Savuskan · 7:30
Alpha Miner, he said, is now able to build three-phase, and with three-phase there is effectively no limit on power; a unit could go as high as perhaps 20,000 watts. Whether that is needed depends on the miner manufacturers, but he said the company foresees the industry heading that way.
The obvious disadvantage is that existing farms would have to change their infrastructure to three-phase, which could be very expensive. New farms, on the other hand, could be built to a three-phase standard from the start and save considerable money on transformers and the rest of the infrastructure they would no longer need. With that, Savuskan wrapped up and opened the floor to questions.