Canaan’s Avalon Systems to Power Japan’s Sustainable Energy Effort
The Singapore-headquartered company, Canaan Inc. (Nasdaq: CAN), said the project will support grid reliability by dynamically adjusting frequency, voltage, and hashrate to smooth out power fluctuations.
Operated by a major Japanese utility, the Avalon servers will begin real-time balancing operations by late 2025. The press release claims Canaan’s proprietary control chip enables the hardware to respond instantly to changing grid loads, optimizing performance and improving energy efficiency.
The company noted that the initiative highlights Japan’s broader digital-asset reforms, which aim to reclassify crypto assets as financial products under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, introduce a flat 20% tax on crypto gains, and expand regulated bank participation in digital-asset services.
Canaan detailed its hydro-cooled architecture is designed to reduce heat output and improve sustainability in energy-intensive environments, aligning with Japan’s renewable energy goals. The company remarked its system’s “smart control” algorithms enable miners to act as digital load balancers — a function that integrates bitcoin mining with power grid management.
“With our Avalon hydro-cooled servers equipped with smart control chips and bitcoin mining technology, utilities can leverage bitcoin mining as a digital load balancer, improving both energy sustainability and grid efficiency,” said Canaan CEO Nangeng Zhang.
The Canaan exec further remarked:
“As residential, AI compute, and high-density data centers place increasing pressure on national power systems, we are seeing rising demand for our energy-efficient, grid-interactive solutions across Asia, North America, and Europe. This project builds on a similar initiative we supported in the Netherlands last year, and we expect to expand such deployments with global energy and data-center partners in 2026.”
Canaan’s latest contract follows similar deployments in Europe, including a Dutch project aimed at grid optimization through crypto mining operations. The firm expects to expand such collaborations with utilities and data-center operators across Asia, North America, and Europe through 2026.
At press time, global metrics collected by hashrateindex.com show Japan’s hashrate stands at 0.048% of the 1,100 exahash per second (EH/s) aggregate, which is around 0.5 EH/s of output.
FAQ
- What is the focus of Canaan’s new contract in Japan?
Canaan will deploy 4.5 MW of Avalon hydro-cooled mining servers to help stabilize Japan’s power grid. - How will Canaan’s servers improve grid performance?
The Avalon units use smart chips to dynamically adjust voltage, frequency, and hashrate for real-time load balancing. - Why is Japan turning to bitcoin mining technology?
Bitcoin mining’s computational flexibility allows excess power to be absorbed or released, improving energy efficiency. - When will the project begin operations?
Canaan said grid balancing operations will commence before the end of 2025.
