French energy giant Engie focuses on Bitcoin mining at Brazilian mega solar project
French utility giant Engie is considering installing a battery storage system or a Bitcoin mining data center at its newly launched Asu Sol solar power plant in Brazil, with the aim of offsetting growing curtailment losses and improving the economics of the project, the company reported. Reuters Report.
Eduardo Sattamini, Engie’s Brazil country manager, told reporters that the company is considering “off-takers” that could potentially absorb excess generation from the 895-megawatt peak facility, which is the largest solar power project in Engie’s global portfolio.
According to Engie, the company is 23.64% owned and 33.20% controlled by the French government and typically focuses on the transition to low-carbon energy.
Azú Sol, located in northeastern Brazil, began full-scale commercial operations this month, but is already suffering from grid-imposed power cuts. The regulation is aimed at stabilizing Brazil’s electricity system, forcing renewable energy power plants to scale back output when supply exceeds demand.
Capacity reduction will become an increasing challenge for Brazil’s solar and wind power producers from 2023 onwards, as a new wave of renewable energy collides with sluggish demand, transmission bottlenecks and the rapid expansion of distributed generation, especially rooftop solar PV. As a result, billions of reais in revenue were lost across the industry.
To alleviate this problem, Engie is considering on-site battery storage or hosting energy-intensive data centers dedicated to Bitcoin mining. This is a strategy that effectively converts pent-up power into monetizable assets. But Sattamini warned that such efforts would take years to materialize.
“It’s not coming next month,” he said. “Implementation will take several years.”
Bitcoin miners are shifting their focus to AI
All of this is happening as more and more Bitcoin miners pivot to AI. With margins shrinking and subsidies trending towards zero, these Bitcoin miners are repurposing infrastructure to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom.
Data centers originally built for ASIC-powered SHA-256 hashing have been retrofitted to host high-performance GPUs optimized for AI training and inference workloads.
Major businesses are leading the way. Bitfarms has publicly announced plans to wind down its Bitcoin mining operations in 2026-27, converting its Washington state facility into an AI-enabled GPU-as-a-Service hub, complete with liquid-cooled Nvidia GB300 hardware, backed by a $128 million upgrade deal.
Other mining companies like IREN have signed multi-billion dollar GPU cloud deals with major technology partners like Microsoft, demonstrating that traditional mining power capacity can be redeployed into stable, contracted AI computing revenue.
Bitdeer Technologies also completely liquidated its corporate Bitcoin vault and reported a zero balance. $BTC As of February 20th, after an 8-week drawdown from approximately $2,000 $BTC Including the sale of 189.8 at the end of 2025 $BTC those produced in the latest week and the remaining 943.1 $BTC In reserve.
The company said it is moving to AI infrastructure, deploying NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 systems in Malaysia and converting several sites from crypto mining to AI data centers.
The post French energy giant Engie eyes Bitcoin mining at mega solar project in Brazil was first published in Bitcoin Magazine and written by Micah Zimmerman.
