"Engie investigates battery storage & Bitcoin mining at Assu Sol solar plant, Brazil's largest, to mitigate curtailment losses & boost project economics. E
In Brazil, French energy giant Engie is investigating potential uses for battery storage systems or Bitcoin mining data centers at its recently operational Assu Sol solar plant, aiming to mitigate escalating curtailment losses and enhance project economics.
Eduardo Sattamini, Engie's country manager in Brazil, disclosed that the company is examining prospective "offtakers" capable of absorbing excess generation from the 895-megawatt-peak solar facility, which is the largest within Engie's global portfolio.
Engie, with a 23.64% French government ownership and a 33.20% control, typically focuses on low-carbon energy transition. The Assu Sol plant in Brazil's northeast started full commercial operation this month but has already faced grid-imposed curtailments due to restrictions designed to stabilize the country's power system. These constraints force renewable plants to reduce output when supply surpasses demand, a growing challenge for solar and wind operators in Brazil since 2023.
Curtailment has led to significant revenue losses across the sector, totaling billions of reais. To counteract this issue, Engie is contemplating on-site battery storage or hosting energy-intensive Bitcoin mining data centers, a strategy that would transform otherwise idle power into a marketable asset. However, Sattamini warned that any such initiative would require several years for implementation.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of Bitcoin miners are transitioning towards artificial intelligence (AI). With narrowing margins and block subsidies approaching zero, these miners are reconfiguring their infrastructure to capitalize on the burgeoning AI sector. Data centers dedicated to Bitcoin mining could potentially serve as valuable resources in this regard.
In an industry shift, specialized Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) hardware previously employed for SHA-256 hashing in cryptocurrency mining is being repurposed to accommodate high-performance Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) optimized for Artificial Intelligence (AI) training and inference tasks.
Leading the transformation are large-scale operators, such as Bitfarms, who have announced plans to phase out Bitcoin mining operations by 2026–27. Their Washington State facility will undergo a $128 million upgrade to become an AI-ready GPU-as-a-Service hub, utilizing liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 hardware.
Other mining companies like IREN are securing multibillion-dollar GPU cloud partnerships with tech giants such as Microsoft, indicating a transition of traditional mining power capacity into steady, contracted AI compute revenue.
Furthermore, Bitdeer Technologies has entirely liquidated its corporate Bitcoin holdings, reporting no remaining BTC as of February 2026 following an eight-week selloff from approximately 2,000 BTC at year-end 2025. This included the sale of 189.8 BTC in the latest week and the depletion of its 943.1 BTC reserves. The company has expressed intentions to move into AI infrastructure, deploying NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 systems in Malaysia and transitioning several sites from crypto mining to AI data centers.
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