Resource inefficiency is inconsequential as long as it generates profit within a capitalistic system.
If you’re going to create infrastructure to use the extra power, you may as well do useful work with it.
Aluminium smelting is about the most energy intensive thing we do, so better electricity management around that would be far more useful to far more people than creating digital assets for board members to get excited about. Just as an example.
Realistically the easiest way to use cheap/free electricity is to charge electric cars with it. Then we have energy storage and offset power usage later on when electricity is more expensive. There are plenty of ways to continue to make money off that process even if the electricity itself costs very little.
I doubt aluminum smelting makes sense as an intermittent thing.
This is where people keep coming back to hydrogen. While hydrogen doesn’t make sense for vehicles, or long term storage, it might for time shifting of intense energy uses locally
Solar—>hydrogen—>aluminum smelting?
P1: I agree. P2: The issue of negative electricity prices is not just one of demand; It is also one of lacking power delivery infrastructure. So you can use the extra power remotely, as long as we also upgrade the power transmission infrastructure. However; I don’t agree with the statement that it is the easiest solution. Using the energy locally is easier. It would be nice though.
You could actually put some thought into what you devote the energy to, and if wanting to do a blockchain based system, run Stellar or Ethereum nodes. Though they don’t use Proof of Work, so it would not use that much energy, relatively. You could offer supercomputing as a service that run batch jobs during the peak hours though.
That is just commercial electricity use. The issue is about what to do with spare power which appears sporadically, without warning. It wouldn’t be efficient or really possible to run a server farm which only switches on when power is cheap, the main power draw is cooling which is required 24/7.