French utility giant Engie is actively exploring innovative solutions to combat significant curtailment losses and bolster the economic viability of its newly inaugurated Assu Sol solar plant in Brazil. According to Reuters, Engie is considering the installation of battery storage systems or the establishment of bitcoin mining data centers directly at the 895-megawatt-peak facility. This project stands as the largest solar installation within Engie's global portfolio.

Eduardo Sattamini, Engie's country manager in Brazil, articulated the company's objective to identify suitable "offtakers" capable of absorbing the excess electricity generated by the plant. Assu Sol, located in Brazil's northeast, commenced full commercial operations recently but has already encountered substantial grid-imposed curtailments. These restrictions are a mechanism to stabilize Brazil's national power system, necessitating renewable energy plants to reduce their output when electricity supply surpasses demand.

Since 2023, curtailment has emerged as a formidable challenge for solar and wind power operators across Brazil. This issue stems from a confluence of factors: a rapid influx of new renewable energy capacity, stagnant demand growth, existing transmission bottlenecks, and the swift expansion of distributed generation, particularly rooftop solar installations. The cumulative impact of these challenges has resulted in billions of reais in lost revenue for the renewable energy sector.

To counteract these financial setbacks, Engie is evaluating two primary strategies. The first involves on-site battery storage, which would store excess power for later use. The second, more unconventional approach, is to host energy-intensive data centers specifically for bitcoin mining. This strategy would convert what would otherwise be wasted, stranded power into a monetizable asset. However, Sattamini tempered expectations, cautioning that implementing either initiative would be a long-term endeavor, taking "a couple of years" to materialize.

This consideration of bitcoin mining facilities by Engie aligns with a broader industry trend where a growing number of bitcoin miners are re-evaluating their business models. As mining margins tighten and block subsidies inevitably decrease, many bitcoin miners are strategically repurposing their existing infrastructure to capitalize on the burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI) boom. Data centers initially constructed for ASIC-powered SHA-256 hashing are being retrofitted with high-performance GPUs, optimized for AI training and inference workloads.

Leading operators are at the forefront of this pivot. Bitfarms, for instance, has publicly disclosed plans to progressively wind down its bitcoin mining operations between 2026 and 2027. Concurrently, the company intends to transform its Washington State facility into an AI-ready GPU-as-a-Service hub. This transformation includes the integration of liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 hardware, supported by a substantial $128 million upgrade agreement. Similarly, other prominent mining firms, such as IREN, have secured multi-billion-dollar GPU cloud agreements with major technology partners like Microsoft, demonstrating how traditional mining power capacity can be successfully redeployed into stable, contract-based AI compute revenue streams.

Further illustrating this shift, Bitdeer Technologies has completely divested its corporate bitcoin treasury, reporting zero BTC holdings as of February 20, following an eight-week drawdown from approximately 2,000 BTC at the close of 2025. This liquidation included the sale of 189.8 BTC produced in the latest week and its remaining 943.1 BTC reserves. Bitdeer has explicitly stated its strategic move into AI infrastructure, commencing the rollout of NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 systems in Malaysia and converting several of its existing sites from crypto mining operations to dedicated AI data centers.