wasteful is your opinion.

Let me give you an example in the real world. Massena Dam in upstate NY generates, a lot, of hydropower. It was built during the time when aluminum smelting was a thing and the pots could never go cold. This constant draw on the grid and the generators was actually a good thing. When they shut down the smelting, you know, cause it created multiple superfund sites, it became a lot harder to operate the Dam.

A few enterprising bitcoin miners took over the old Alcoa smelter buildings and started using the power. When I went to speak with the people who ran the dam, they were super happy about it. Not only were they now receiving revenue to keep funding the operation of dam, but they were also extending the life of it because of the continuous draw.

The obvious argument would be to allocate the power elsewhere. But this is upstate NY, where nobody wants to live. There just isn't enough demand for ~2GW of power up there, plus it is insanely expensive to build transmission for that amount of power to other locations. Even just the maintenance costs on the lines going the few miles to the smelters was insane.

AI is probably the next best thing to take over that power, but this was all happening long before AI became the thing that it has.