Malaysia has some of the cheapest retail power on Earth.
This is the usual performative nonsense by a foolish government. They could have easily sold them at auction like they do with all sorts of other seized goods. ASIC's go for a few thousand dollars each.
Perhaps it's among the cheapest because it's subsidized as a public good?
EDIT: According to Wikipedia, it's heavily tiered and heavily subsidized, but also that it shouldn't be particularly helpful for mining, unless they're splitting it into a bunch of accounts to stay in one of the lower tiers:
Domestic consumer pricing per kWh used, subsidized
4.95 @ 1 to 200 kWh
7.59 @ 201 to 300 kWh
11.73 @ 301 to 600 kWh
12.41 @ 601 to 900 kWh
12.98 @ 901 kWh onwards
(exchange rate of 4.4 MYR to US$1 on 24 November 2016)
I live in Malaysia. Electricity is not very cheap once you go above 300 kWh. The current tiers (at least on my most recent monthly bill) are as follows:
- RM 0.218 (USD 0.052) per kWh for the first 200kWh
- RM 0.334 (USD 0.079) per kWh for the next 100kWh
- RM 0.516 (USD 0.120) per kWh for the 300kWh after
Those prices are before the 1.6% tax by the government. And furthermore, any usage above 600kWh is taxed an additional 6% by the energy company.
Live in Malaysia too and am always astounded how much power people use here, they seem very wasteful with aircon.
Generally average about 250kwh per month for 2 people in a 1200 sqf apartment with occasional aircon use. Paying ~6c/kwh is much better than nearly everywhere else on Earth. As a westerner in the country it's basically a rounding error compared to other life costs.
With government bonuses that get thrown around the cost really isn't much unless you are incredibly wasteful or have a huge family/house. Most of the country has gotten big power handouts for covid. I paid 30 RM ($7.50 USD) a few months ago. A pint down the pub costs nearly that.
