Terrahex wants to mine Bitcoin with Nigeria’s spare power
Terrahex is building a Bitcoin mining business around a fairly simple idea: find power that is available but not being used, then put mining machines next to it.
Terrahex Pic
Terrahex is building a Bitcoin mining business around a fairly simple idea: find power that is available but not being used, then put mining machines next to it.
The Nigerian startup was founded in 2025 by Olumayowa Ogunnusi, a former oil and gas executive. He started looking at Bitcoin mining after realising how important electricity is to the business and thinking about the amount of unused generating capacity around some energy operations.
Nigeria has plenty of examples of that problem.
The country had 13,625MW of installed generation capacity in 2025, but an average of only about 5,398MW was available for dispatch, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. By the first quarter of 2026, available generation had dropped to 4,458MW.
Terrahex is not trying to generate more electricity. It wants to use some of what is already available.
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Terrahex is building a Bitcoin mining business around a fairly simple idea: find power that is available but not being used, then put mining machines next to it. The Nigerian startup was founded in 2025 by Olumayowa Ogunnusi, a former oil and gas executive. He started looking at Bitcoin mining after realising how important electricity is to the business and thinking about the amount of unused generating capacity around some energy operations.
Nigeria has plenty of examples of that problem. The country had 13,625MW of installed generation capacity in 2025, but an average of only about 5,398MW was available for dispatch, according to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. By the first quarter of 2026, available generation had dropped to 4,458MW. Terrahex is not trying to generate more electricity. It wants to use some of what is already available.
Its first site, Node One, is being built with up to 9MW of capacity and will house about 2,400 Bitcoin mining machines in six containers. Terrahex expects the first phase to start operating in December 2026 and the full site to be running by the end of March 2027. The company is looking for similar sites around Nigeria's oil and gas belt.
“Terrahex is not trying to generate more electricity. It wants to use some of what is already available.”
Paying for power that would otherwise sit idle
Terrahex plans to work with downstream and midstream energy companies that have excess capacity. Ogunnusi's example is a generator that can produce 50kVA when its owner only needs 30kVA. The unused 20kVA does not have much value to the owner if there is nobody nearby willing to buy it. Terrahex wants to take that electricity and run mining equipment with it. The energy company would receive a minimum guaranteed payment and a share of Terrahex's profits after operating costs. The company has not disclosed the exact revenue split. It is a different proposition from asking an energy company to build new generation specifically for Bitcoin mining.
Terrahex is looking for power that is already being generated. One potential site illustrates how far the company is prepared to go. Ogunnusi said it takes around three hours to drive there from Port Harcourt, followed by a canoe trip and another hour on the road. The site can provide about 7MW, and the nearest residential community is around 45 minutes away. That distance is useful because the mining equipment is noisy. Terrahex also wants to keep the machines away from residential areas because of the heat they produce.
The company is mainly buying ASIC machines, which are built specifically for Bitcoin mining. Terrahex looked at flare gas as another source of power but decided not to pursue it because converting the gas into electricity would bring additional regulatory requirements. Other Nigerian companies are already using flare gas for mining.
A lot of money goes into each megawatt
The numbers get much bigger when Terrahex moves beyond its first site. Ogunnusi estimates that 1MW of mining capacity costs between $2.5 million and $3 million to deploy. The company's target is 100MW within 24 months. Terrahex has raised money from institutional investors, although it has not disclosed the total. Ogunnusi said investment tickets are at least about $500,000 and that he has also invested money from his other businesses.
The company has been spending on the mining machines and the facilities around them. It has also established a hub in Florida where machines are tested and repaired before being sent to Nigeria. The facility can process about 800 miners a month and store as many as 6,000. When Terrahex starts mining commercially, it expects to sell between 60% and 80% of the Bitcoin it produces. The rest can be held and used to help fund expansion.
The business depends on cheap Bitcoin production
Bitcoin mining can look attractive when the price of Bitcoin is high, but the machines keep consuming electricity regardless of what the market is doing.
Bitcoin was trading above $76,000 on Tuesday afternoon, according to the article, but a lower price would put pressure on Terrahex's margins. The mining reward also gets smaller over time. The Bitcoin network cuts the reward roughly every four years. After the 2024 halving, miners went from receiving 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC. The next halving will reduce that to 1.5625 BTC. Terrahex therefore needs its electricity and operating costs to stay low. Ogunnusi expects the company's cost of producing Bitcoin to be within the cheapest 30% of the global mining industry. That figure has not yet been tested in commercial operation. Terrahex is still pre-revenue, and Node One will be its first Nigerian mining site.
AI is part of the plan, but not yet the business
Bitcoin mining is only the first type of computing Terrahex wants to run. Ogunnusi describes the company as a high-performance computing business. Terrahex is testing six GPUs with engineering labs and universities to see whether its sites can also handle lower-level AI inference. There is a practical reason Bitcoin comes first. A Bitcoin miner can be switched off when the power supply drops. The company does not have to maintain a constant computing service for a customer. AI workloads are different. An AI facility needs dependable electricity, cooling, connectivity and low latency. That makes some of Terrahex's remote oil and gas locations difficult places to run AI infrastructure, even if they have cheap electricity. For now, Bitcoin fits the sites better.
The power may not stay spare forever
There is another issue Terrahex will have to deal with as it expands. Electricity that is difficult to use today may become useful later. Nigeria needs more power for households and businesses, and as the grid expands and existing customers consume more electricity, an energy company could eventually find a better use for capacity that is currently available to Terrahex.
That issue has already appeared in Ethiopia. The country attracted large Bitcoin mining operations because of its cheap hydropower. Bitdeer completed a 50MW facility there in May. But Ethiopia has also started restricting new mining power deals as domestic demand for electricity rises. Terrahex is trying to avoid putting all its equipment in one place. Its plan is to build smaller sites around individual sources of excess power.
Node One will show whether that approach makes sense. The company needs to get the machines running, keep electricity costs low and produce enough Bitcoin to cover its capital and operating costs while still leaving money for its energy partners. Until that happens, Terrahex has a site under construction and a plan for using Nigeria's spare electricity. The business has yet to prove that the numbers work at scale.
