Overinstallation of renewable production is likely one of the lowest cost ways to hit carbon reduction goals. But costs routinely go negative already, even in the midwest, largely because of the renewable tax production credits where producers still make money even selling at a loss.

This problem will only get worse, so finding productive use cases for this capacity is great.

While I think bitcoin makes some sense, I personally think the new coin Chia could make even more sense. "Farming" (aka mining) chia is very energy lite - but it does require "plotting" which is more energy intensive. If plotters run during the inexpensive energy periods and low cost farming is the only thing that runs during the peak energy cost periods, then the network wouldn't see huge fluctuations in mining and leave more vulnerable during periods of low mining and high energy costs.