French Vitality Large Engie Eyes Bitcoin Mining in Brazil Photo voltaic Mega Venture
French utility large Engie is exploring putting in battery storage programs or bitcoin mining information facilities at its not too long ago opened Assu Sol photo voltaic plant in Brazil, because it seeks to offset rising curtailment losses and enhance the challenge’s economics, based on Reuters info.
Chatting with reporters, Eduardo Sattamini, Engie’s nation supervisor in Brazil, stated the corporate is evaluating potential “consumers” that might take up extra era from the 895 megawatt-peak facility, the most important photo voltaic challenge in Engie’s world portfolio.
Based on Engie, the corporate is 23.64% owned and 33.20% managed by the French authorities, and sometimes focuses on the low-carbon vitality transition.
Situated in northeastern Brazil, Assu Sol entered full industrial operation this month, however has already been affected by cuts imposed by the community. The restrictions, designed to stabilize Brazil’s electrical energy system, power renewable crops to cut back manufacturing when provide exceeds demand.
Curtailment has change into a rising problem for photo voltaic and wind operators in Brazil from 2023, as a wave of recent renewable capability collides with gradual demand progress, transmission bottlenecks and the speedy growth of distributed era, notably rooftop photo voltaic. The end result has been billions of reais in misplaced income throughout the sector.
To mitigate the issue, Engie is contemplating on-site battery storage or internet hosting energy-intensive information facilities devoted to bitcoin mining, a method that will successfully convert in any other case stagnant vitality right into a monetizable asset. Sattamini warned, nonetheless, that any such initiative would take years to materialize.
“That is not coming subsequent month,” he stated. “It can take us a few years to implement.”
Bitcoin miners are turning to AI
All of this occurs as a rising variety of bitcoin miners are turning to AI. As margins tighten and block subsidies from trending towards zero, these bitcoin miners are repurposing their infrastructure to reap the benefits of the rise of synthetic intelligence.
Information facilities initially constructed for ASIC-powered SHA-256 hashing are being retrofitted to deal with high-performance GPUs optimized for AI coaching and inference workloads.
The massive operators are within the lead. Bitfarms has publicly outlined its plans to close down its Bitcoin mining operations by means of 2026-27 and convert its Washington state facility into an AI-ready GPU-as-a-service heart, full with liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 {hardware} backed by a $128 million improve deal.
Different mining firms like IREN have signed multi-million greenback GPU cloud offers with main expertise companions like Microsoft, indicating that conventional mining energy capability might be redeployed into secure, contracted income from AI computing.
Moreover, Bitdeer Applied sciences has fully liquidated its company bitcoin treasury, reporting zero $BTC held starting February 20 after an eight-week discount of roughly 2,000 $BTC on the finish of 2025, together with the sale of 189.8 $BTC produced over the past week and its remaining 943.1 $BTC in reserves.
The corporate stated it’s shifting into AI infrastructure, deploying NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 programs in Malaysia and shifting a number of of its cryptocurrency mining websites to AI information facilities.
This publish French Vitality Large Engie Eyes Bitcoin Mining in Brazil Photo voltaic Mega Venture first appeared in Bitcoin Journal and is written by Micah Zimmerman.
