Message recieved from giga watt right now.. batch 3 in 2 weeks... excellent!
Giga Watt
Greetings to the Giga Watt Community,
Giga Watt has continued to make steady progress on construction despite delaying factors out of our control. I want to thank those of you sending supportive messages and acknowledge the frustrations felt by some of you sending us not-so-supportive messages.
The process of building a Giga Pod involves a number of discrete steps, from initial site planning to final inspection. Many of these steps involve reviews, approvals and inspections by the local government agencies in charge of development, safety and standards. Some of these critical steps are taking longer than planned. They cannot be “pushed” or expedited in any way other than our persistent daily communication with agency heads and bureaucrats in charge of these processes. There is simply no accurate way to estimate a finishing date for the project, as delays are neither consistent nor predictable. When able, we aim to provide best estimate of time schedules, always subject to delays as encountered.
Giga Watt’s project represents a very large new step in scaling our emerging industry of Blockchain Computing. The scale and uniqueness of this project is unprecedented and alien to local authorities in rural counties of Washington state. As we advance this technological frontier, we must also comply with existing and antiquated regulatory standards until new standards can be developed. Giga Watt is working hard to define those new standards to pave a smoother path for future build outs.
We published a construction timeline at
https://giga-watt.com/promo/timeline. Please refer to it if you want to follow along with progress.
Construction Schedule Update: Batch 3 & 4
We have completed the first Giga Pod associated with Batch 3. When this pod receives final electrical inspection approval, Giga Watt will issue the first 1.2M WTT tokens to Batch 3 holders. This should happen within two weeks.
We have just received the first of two building permits for our next six pod developments, which provides the rest of the power capacity to Batch 3 and most of the power for Batch 4 WTT holders. Permit in hand, We estimate the build time for this next phase to be 8-10 weeks.
What happened upon final L&I Inspection for Pod One?
After several visits to inspect the pod during construction, and on the morning of final approval for occupancy, Washington State Labor & Industries notified us of a requirement that the equipment we run inside the pod shall be UL Listed. To date, in over four years of building projects and running this very same equipment, this has never been required.
Underwriters Laboratories
Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is a nationally recognized, independent product safety certification organization. UL is also affiliated with the Underwriters' Laboratories of Canada (CUL). With public safety the heart of UL’s mission, UL acts as a safety resource and advocate. UL works closely with customers, regulators, insurers, retailers, consumers and others on research, technology, safety and education initiatives.
UL listing is oriented towards public and consumer safety standards for electronics. Obviously our GigaPods are not public spaces and only operated by trained personnel. Confoundingly, our inspectors still applied this standard.
What does the UL listing requirement mean to Giga Watt?
The blockchain processing units made by all manufacturers are not yet UL Listed. This is a market-maturity benchmark and we will see these manufacturers increase their product certifications over time. I have personally notified BitMain of this requirement and they assured me that they will begin the process immediately, though it takes months to complete.
This means Giga Watt has to find a replacement for all non UL power supplies, which include the power supplies our customers purchased with their mining units. That process has been underway since we were informed of this requirement, and I expect to have substitute power supplies in hand before we need them for the next pod. UL has also indicated that fans used on the mining units themselves may not be UL compatible. Giga Watt is assisting with document discovery related to those components as well, in order to either document or replace fans as needed to be compliant.
Additional inspection related items
A few additional final inspection related items “popped up” on these recent visits. We addressed and resolved these issues immediately upon being informed of the “new” requirements. There are no current outstanding inspection issues other than the UL Listed power supply and fan requirement.
Testing
Giga Watt is taking advantage of a short term opportunity to run some equipment under test. For a few weeks following final inspections, provided that there are no code violation or compliance issues, we will operate equipment under a Testing Period guideline.
Questions and concerns will still linger, so I continue to personally discuss the project on official Giga Watt support chat channels in order to answer questions. I do appreciate your continued patience and support.
Best Regards
Dave Carlson, CEO
Giga Watt, Inc.
