French vitality big Engie focuses on Bitcoin mining at Brazilian mega photo voltaic undertaking
French utility big Engie is contemplating putting in a battery storage system or a Bitcoin mining knowledge middle at its newly launched Asu Sol solar energy plant in Brazil, with the intention of offsetting rising curtailment losses and bettering the economics of the undertaking, the corporate reported. Reuters Report.
Eduardo Sattamini, Engie’s Brazil nation supervisor, informed reporters that the corporate is contemplating “off-takers” that might doubtlessly take up extra technology from the 895-megawatt peak facility, which is the most important solar energy undertaking in Engie’s world portfolio.
In line with Engie, the corporate is 23.64% owned and 33.20% managed by the French authorities and sometimes focuses on the transition to low-carbon vitality.
Azú Sol, positioned in northeastern Brazil, started full-scale industrial operations this month, however is already affected by grid-imposed energy cuts. The regulation is geared toward stabilizing Brazil’s electrical energy system, forcing renewable vitality energy crops to reduce output when provide exceeds demand.
Capability discount will change into an growing problem for Brazil’s photo voltaic and wind energy producers from 2023 onwards, as a brand new wave of renewable vitality collides with sluggish demand, transmission bottlenecks and the speedy growth of distributed technology, particularly rooftop photo voltaic PV. In consequence, billions of reais in income had been misplaced throughout the trade.
To alleviate this downside, Engie is contemplating on-site battery storage or internet hosting energy-intensive knowledge facilities devoted to Bitcoin mining. It is a technique that successfully converts pent-up energy into monetizable property. However Sattamini warned that such efforts would take years to materialize.
“It isn’t coming subsequent month,” he stated. “Implementation will take a number of years.”
Bitcoin miners are shifting their focus to AI
All of that is occurring as increasingly more Bitcoin miners pivot to AI. With margins shrinking and subsidies trending in direction of zero, these Bitcoin miners are repurposing infrastructure to capitalize on the factitious intelligence growth.
Knowledge facilities initially constructed for ASIC-powered SHA-256 hashing have been retrofitted to host high-performance GPUs optimized for AI coaching and inference workloads.
Main companies are main the best way. Bitfarms has publicly introduced plans to wind down its Bitcoin mining operations in 2026-27, changing its Washington state facility into an AI-enabled GPU-as-a-Service hub, full with liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 {hardware}, backed by a $128 million improve deal.
Different mining firms like IREN have signed multi-billion greenback GPU cloud offers with main expertise companions like Microsoft, demonstrating that conventional mining energy capability will be redeployed into steady, contracted AI computing income.
Bitdeer Applied sciences additionally utterly liquidated its company Bitcoin vault and reported a zero stability. $BTC As of February twentieth, after an 8-week drawdown from roughly $2,000 $BTC Together with the sale of 189.8 on the finish of 2025 $BTC these produced within the newest week and the remaining 943.1 $BTC In reserve.
The corporate stated it’s shifting to AI infrastructure, deploying NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 methods in Malaysia and changing a number of websites from crypto mining to AI knowledge facilities.
The publish French vitality big Engie eyes Bitcoin mining at mega photo voltaic undertaking in Brazil was first printed in Bitcoin Journal and written by Micah Zimmerman.
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