On November 23, a fire broke out at Greenidge Generation’s power facility in Dresden, New York, affecting its adjacent Bitcoin mining farm.

The cause was a fault in a set of electrical switchgear. The incident triggered automatic safety procedures, cutting power across the entire plant.

The fire has now been brought under control, and fortunately no one was injured, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on November 28.

For Greenidge, the Dresden plant is the core of its operations.

According to third-quarter financial data, the facility has roughly 106 megawatts of rated natural-gas-fired generation capacity. It supports most of the company’s own Bitcoin crypto mining operations and also manages mining rigs for customers such as NYDIG, making it the backbone of the business.

Based on the initial inspection so far, neither the company’s own Bitcoin mining rigs nor customer-hosted machines at the site appear to have suffered major damage, leaving significant room for production to resume.

Greenidge has not said when it expects a partial recovery or a full restart. It has only disclosed that it is working with the utility, local fire departments and specialized electrical contractors to determine the cause of the incident, set a repair plan and prepare to bring the plant back online in the coming weeks.

The timing of the shutdown is notable: not long before the incident, the Dresden plant had just received a renewed Title V air permit from New York State regulators.

For years, the plant has been under close scrutiny from environmental authorities because of its model of using natural gas-fired power to mine Bitcoin. Greenidge therefore sees the permit renewal as an important guarantee for the stability of its business.

This is not an isolated case. Crypto mining sites have seen more than one recent safety incident. Another company, Bitdeer, also halted work at a Bitcoin mining farm it was building in Ohio after a fire, disrupting the entire project schedule.

For Greenidge, the most urgent task now is to identify the cause, repair the facility and minimize the loss of computing power and revenue from the shutdown. Viewed across the industry, however, two fires in quick succession should put the crypto mining sector on alert.

Bitcoin crypto mining depends heavily on high-power electrical equipment. When everyone is chasing computing power and returns, how should capacity and safety be balanced?

And how can operators build a stronger safety foundation for electrical systems while staying within the constraints of environmental compliance?

Greenidge is unlikely to be the only company that has to confront that question.