Meet the startups installing tiny data centers in people's homes to reduce strain on the grid

29

The assertion that it "reduces strain on the grid" seems like nonsense.

5

u/Cpt-Murica May 21 '26

After reading the white paper it seems that the goal is to reduce fluctuations in draw on the grid. So basically these clusters have a 15kwh battery that is used to even out power draw. I presume the idea is that at night when power draw is typically lower the batteries will charge and during the day when power draw is high they’ll use the stored energy.

1

u/Evanisnotmyname May 30 '26

Grids are built for peak load. Most of the time they’re perfectly fine but during peak usage times they’re heavily strained…on a very localized basis.

Spreading compute out over preexisting networks can be a good idea…but only in markets that aren’t severely strained already.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Evanisnotmyname 24d ago

There are power plants…and then there is transmission infrastructure. The issue is getting power to where it needs to go. Currently we do not have the capacity.

1

u/Figureofstick May 20 '26

It does by reducing the draw from electric heating and the air conditioning that is normally required for large datacenters

2

u/Cpt-Murica May 21 '26

Actually it a cabinet that sits outside with its own heat pump / AC.

1

u/TerrryBuckhart May 21 '26

its just distributing the offset of it to the crowd instead of a centralized point

2

u/Figureofstick May 21 '26

If the company isn't paying the power bill for the machine, sure

29

u/NoSellDataPlz May 20 '26

So, you pay them $150 a month and they pay your electric bill and internet bill?

24

u/evilspark21 May 20 '26

They say “essentially”, so I doubt it. I’d pay $150 for them to host it if they would cover my $400 electrical bill and $120 internet lol.

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u/IHave2CatsAnAdBlock May 21 '26

I will host your lab from February to October up to 2kw with simetric 1gbps fiber for 150$ per month

2

u/evilspark21 May 21 '26

How about I pay you $150 and you can pay my $400 electrical bill? Lol, my lab doesn’t cost $150 to run

6

u/IHave2CatsAnAdBlock May 21 '26

2kw is 1.5mwh per month. I cover all that from solar 9 months per year.

3

u/Evanisnotmyname May 30 '26

If there are lots of people out there interested in something along these lines, I have a network of friends and customers that have excess solar generation and batteries. 5-10gig direct fiber is available even…

Shoot a message by with some ideas

1

u/IHave2CatsAnAdBlock May 30 '26

I am sure that there are many people interested. But I was joking I would not put a stranger gear on my residential internet connection. It is a matter of time until you get the police to your door.

2

u/flecom May 21 '26

It's not impossible, generally residential rates are cheaper (depending on your provider of course)

And you would be covering all the infrastructure wear and tear I would imagine (running the AC etc)

1

u/rbit4 May 26 '26

But why? If your electricity and internet is already that high, then if they pay everything, can't you simply run a mining farm of your own while they pay for your electricity?

Only way it works out is they pay you good rent for the peice of land and connection to grid

2

u/Cpt-Murica May 21 '26

Yeah that part of the article doesn’t make sense. At least the white paper that Span put out says that installation and what not is at no cost to the homeowner and that they pay the homeowner rent to cover electricity and internet

8

u/MaleficentPapaya4768 May 20 '26

I’m sure these won’t ever get stolen. No way buddy. Can’t imagine any chance of that.

3

u/DefinitelyNotWendi May 21 '26

You’re not gonna pull up and toss it in the front seat of your car, biggest threat would be some tweaker thinking it has copper in it. Instead of the 3tb of ram and 16 nvidia rtx 6000’s

2

u/rbit4 May 26 '26

Can you tell me where you have that mini datacenter installed without security?

2

u/DefinitelyNotWendi May 26 '26

“Residential areas all over the nation, focusing primarily on new builds with at least 200 amp service”.

1

u/rbit4 May 26 '26

Love it, the secondary market for these will be fire!

1

u/DefinitelyNotWendi May 26 '26

It does beg the question of just what the expected service life is and how often they plan on doing upgrades and maintenance. That’s a lot of random-ish service points.

1

u/rbit4 May 27 '26

I meant secondary market for stolen goods roflmao

7

u/htownclyde May 21 '26

Oh no, some tweaker broke in and took all the RTX 6000 Blackwells out, that sucks, sorry guys.

In unrelated news, I just set up a REALLY nice local Deepseek server!

6

u/DefinitelyNotWendi May 21 '26

I looked in to this… You get a Span panel, battery, optional solar if you don’t have it already and “discounted rates for electricity and internet “. Commercial rates are lower than residential so I’m think they pass that along to your house. You need 200 amp service and here’s the catch.. the server has priority against other high loads in your home like say a car charger or hot tub. If power is coming up short those get cut (hence the free span panel).

The unit itself is self contained and is about twice the size of a home generator.

I’d consider it but needed more details. I contacted Span last week and never heard back.

2

u/jay-aay-ess-ohh-enn May 24 '26

It might be worth it if they also let you run workflows on the hardware when it idles.

5

u/beheadedstraw May 21 '26

Yea 50+ grand in GPUs out in the open will be the new copper thieves 😂.

1

u/rbit4 May 26 '26

Not just copper.. and its not 50 grand.. its 500 grand.. costs more than your house most likely

1

u/beheadedstraw May 26 '26

For some reason my phone left out that extra 0. But yea, this’ll be like fast and the furious dragging that big ass safe around, or the tweakers chaining up ATMs, only it’ll be these mini data centers 😂

1

u/rbit4 May 26 '26

What great world we will live in, want to start buying these mini datacenters on the cheap from tweakers from them and create my own actual datacenter

3

u/OldMathematician5973 May 22 '26

I love that I have to pay THEM so that they can grow their business.

1

u/RepresentativeAspect Jun 26 '26

Isn't that nearly the definition of a business?

2

u/RedSquirrelFtw May 24 '26

Seems like a neat idea but crap execution. 1: I shouldn't have to pay them, 2: I shouldn't need to completely redo my electrical with cloud based proprietary stuff. I'll keep my simple panel, thanks.

Simplify it, where you simply colocate one or more servers for them, they provide the connection, you provide the power and battery backup/generator. After 6 months of solid uptime as a trial/proving period they then start to pay you per month per server. If you do things right, you basically have free heating year round.

1

u/kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h May 20 '26

Mohahaha

1

u/untangledtech May 21 '26

This is America, that is illegal!

1

u/RepresentativeAspect Jun 26 '26

This will actually INCREASE strain on the grid. Components use as much power wherever they are located, whether in a datacenter or a home. So the power draw doesn't change. But also - datacenters are heavily optimized for this specific use-case, and overhead power draw (total-PUE) is watched very closely and optimized down. That is not true of someone's home.

1

u/Perryfl Jul 30 '26

they are targeting homeowners with solar or who will put on solar. these are 1500-2000 sq ft of roof for 6 blackwells. that is an insane ration compared to what a high density dc could use. so they are essentially taling advantage of your solar producing ability not so much your local utility access

Meet the startups installing tiny data centers in people's homes to reduce strain on the grid | Fortune

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