Renewable energy sources such as wind power are increasing their share of the world energy matrix. In Brazil, the regulator promotes reverse bid auctions where the winner agrees to begin production a number of years ahead under a long-term contract. If a wind farm project chooses to anticipate construction, it can sell its energy in the short-term market but becomes subject to electricity price volatility. In order to create incentives for early investment, we propose that wind farm investors can hedge electricity price risk by simultaneously investing in a cryptocurrency mining facility that uses electricity as input to produce newly minted Bitcoins. As electricity and Bitcoin prices are uncorrelated, the ability to switch between these outputs allows the wind farm to maximize revenues and minimize losses. We develop a numerical application under the real options approach to determine the financial impact of the investment in a Bitcoin facility for the wind energy producer that will allow it to optimally switch outputs depending on the relative future prices of electricity and Bitcoins. The short-term energy price and Bitcoin price/mining-difficulty ratio are modeled as distinct stochastic diffusion processes. The results indicate that the option to switch outputs significantly increases the generator's revenue while simultaneously decreasing the risk of anticipating the construction. These findings, which can also be applied to other renewable energy sources, may be of interest to both the energy generator as well as the system regulator as it creates an incentive for early investment in sustainable and renewable energy sources.

风力等可再生能源正在增加其在世界能源矩阵中的份额。在巴西，监管机构促进反向竞标拍卖，中标者同意根据长期合同提前数年开始生产。如果风电场项目选择预期建设，它可以在短期市场上出售其能源，但会受到电价波动的影响。为了为早期投资创造激励，我们建议风电场投资者可以通过同时投资于使用电力作为输入来生产新铸造的比特币的加密货币采矿设施来对冲电价风险。由于电力和比特币的价格是不相关的，因此在这些输出之间切换的能力使风电场可以最大限度地提高收入，并最大程度地减少损失。我们在实物期权方法下开发了一个数值应用程序，以确定风能生产商对比特币设施投资的财务影响，这将使其能够根据电力和比特币的相对未来价格最佳地转换输出。短期能源价格和比特币价格/采矿难度比被建模为不同的随机扩散过程。结果表明，切换输出的选项显着增加了发电机的收入，同时降低了预期建造的风险。这些发现，也可以应用于其他可再生能源，可能对能源产生者以及系统监管者都感兴趣，因为它为鼓励早期投资于可持续和可再生能源创造了动力。