French Vitality Large Engie Eyes Bitcoin Mining at Brazil Mega Photo voltaic Venture
French utility big Engie is exploring the set up of battery storage techniques or bitcoin mining knowledge facilities at its newly launched Assu Sol photo voltaic plant in Brazil, because it seems to offset mounting curtailment losses and enhance venture economics, in response to Reuters reporting.
Talking to reporters, Eduardo Sattamini, Engie’s nation supervisor in Brazil, stated the corporate is evaluating potential “offtakers” that might take in extra era from the 895-megawatt-peak facility — the biggest photo voltaic venture in Engie’s world portfolio.
In line with Engie, the corporate is 23.64% owned and 33.20% managed by the French authorities, and it usually focuses on low-carbon power transition.
Situated in Brazil’s northeast, Assu Sol entered full industrial operation this month however has already been impacted by grid-imposed curtailments. The restrictions, designed to stabilize Brazil’s energy system, pressure renewable vegetation to cut back output when provide exceeds demand.
Curtailment has grow to be a rising problem for photo voltaic and wind operators in Brazil since 2023, as a wave of latest renewable capability collides with sluggish demand progress, transmission bottlenecks and speedy growth in distributed era, notably rooftop photo voltaic. The end result has been billions of reais in misplaced income throughout the sector.
To mitigate the difficulty, Engie is contemplating on-site battery storage or internet hosting energy-intensive knowledge facilities devoted to bitcoin mining — a method that might successfully convert in any other case stranded energy right into a monetizable asset. Sattamini cautioned, nonetheless, that any such initiative would take years to materialize.
“That’s not coming subsequent month,” he stated. “It is going to take a few years for us to implement.”
Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI
All that is taking place as a rising variety of bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI. As margins tighten and block subsidies development towards zero, these bitcoin miners are repurposing their infrastructure to faucet into the synthetic intelligence increase.
Knowledge facilities initially constructed for ASIC-powered SHA-256 hashing are being retrofitted to host high-performance GPUs optimized for AI coaching and inference workloads.
Giant operators are main the cost. Bitfarms has publicly outlined plans to wind down its Bitcoin mining operations by means of 2026–27 and convert its Washington State facility into an AI-ready GPU-as-a-Service hub, full with liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 {hardware} backed by a $128 million improve deal.
Different mining companies like IREN have locked in multibillion-dollar GPU cloud agreements with main tech companions like Microsoft, signaling that conventional mining energy capability will be redeployed into steady, contracted AI compute income.
Additionally, Bitdeer Applied sciences has absolutely liquidated its company bitcoin treasury, reporting zero $BTC held as of Feb. 20 after an eight-week drawdown from roughly 2,000 $BTC at year-end 2025, together with the sale of 189.8 $BTC produced in the course of the newest week and its remaining 943.1 $BTC in reserves.
The corporate stated they’re shifting into AI infrastructure, rolling out NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 techniques in Malaysia and switching a number of of their websites from crypto mining to AI knowledge facilities.
This submit French Vitality Large Engie Eyes Bitcoin Mining at Brazil Mega Photo voltaic Venture first appeared on Bitcoin Journal and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
