[IkmoIkmo]

For a small village with excess solar capacity, absolutely, a university in a nearby city could choose to negotiate a PPA with the village's solar entrepreneurs and build a datacentre there using the electricity. But if you want renewables to make a difference worldwide and go from 1% of electricity generation to say 30%, then you're going to need such applications on a global scale. Right now there simply aren't such applications, evidenced by the large differences in the price of electricity throughout the day which means there's no arbitrage opportunities available to smooth that out.

The most likely arbitrage factor will probably be the rise of electric cars which will provide a natural, decentralised, consumer-driven battery storage on a large scale. Cars are idle most of the day, e.g. when you're at work at noon and solar generates peak power, they can be programmed to charge when prices are low, and at peak times prices would be pushed down due to extra supply.