No gas, battery and solar. You should read the attached material, it's pretty interesting.

What? No, this is a company that already makes "smart" electric panels and meters. They've partnered with a homebuilder to have them installed in some new construction. This is a box that sits outside next to the meter. Interior wiring is irrelevant.

Part of the rationale is reducing latency to end users by having the inferencing performed in the neighborhood.

Seriously, did anyone commenting read any of the linked material?

What if it's not meant to be an alternative, but a supplement to allow inference to be offloaded somewhere that provides lower latency to end users?

The company has been making "smart" electric panels and meters since 2018, so it's not like they're fly-by-night.

Well, they point to lower utility bills. If I only had to pay $150 a month for both power and internet, I'd let someone mount a box to the side of my house.

If it pans out.

You could read the article instead of presuming or assuming anything. Though let me warn you - if you do read the material, you may feel silly about your 'sumptions.

Maybe people who read the article? Which, clearly, you did not. So let me sum it up for you: No cost to the homeowner, they pay for power and internet and charge you a flat monthly fee for both (which may be $150, may be more, may be $0), and it's a fanless liquid cooled system.

At least that's the idea and the claims. They say they're already rolling it out in some new construction, at no extra cost to the homebuyers. Will it pan out? I don't know.

That seems to be the idea. “As the demand for AI and inference compute continues to accelerate, there is a critical need for low-latency solutions that are proximal to end users and can scale rapidly”. Which, under the CEO-speak, comes down to, "do the inferencing close to the users, it'll be faster".

Hey, if having that box there meant I only paid $150 a month for power and internet, I'd sit out with a shotgun to keep it safe.

RTFA!

A Span installation typically includes a smart panel, an outdoor XFRA unit, a backup battery, and sometimes solar panels.

[...]

"The exact arrangement will vary from one neighborhood or region to the next, but it’s likely that Span will take on paying the host’s electricity and internet bills directly, and charge a flat fee every month that’s much lower than what the host would otherwise pay to their electric utility and internet service provider," says a Span spokesperson.

"An example flat fee that we’ve shared previously is $150 per month, about half of what average Americans pay for their electricity and internet service. In some cases, there may be no fee at all."

[...]
Span says XFRA is being installed during the construction process at no cost to the homeowner—and that the system has already been rolled out in a small number of communities.

Why not read the material first? That way, you don't have to look silly when your points have already been dealt with. For example, "Span is incorporating technology from Nvidia into its system, including a liquid-cooled, fanless component inside the server. The design helps eliminate the noise typically associated with data centers—a frequent complaint in communities near large facilities."

You don't know if it's always on. Those details aren't present (that I saw), and it's likely that they would throttle when the grid was under heavy load. A reasonable inference from what the company (who make "smart" electric panels) is saying about power management.

As for cooling, "Span is incorporating technology from Nvidia into its system, including a liquid-cooled, fanless component inside the server. The design helps eliminate the noise typically associated with data centers—a frequent complaint in communities near large facilities."

Well, what kind of stove? I just replaced a gas range with an electric and needed my brother-in-law to install a 220 line for it, because the gas range only needed 110.

Why presume when you can read?

"Span says XFRA is being installed during the construction process at no cost to the homeowner—and that the system has already been rolled out in a small number of communities."

"The exact arrangement will vary from one neighborhood or region to the next, but it’s likely that Span will take on paying the host’s electricity and internet bills directly, and charge a flat fee every month that’s much lower than what the host would otherwise pay to their electric utility and internet service provider," says a Span spokesperson.

"An example flat fee that we’ve shared previously is $150 per month, about half of what average Americans pay for their electricity and internet service. In some cases, there may be no fee at all."

If the hardware looks like what they have in the mockup image, you wouldn't need a removal bond, you'd just take the box down.

Now think about it the smart way - if the company fails and nobody comes to take the hardware, what did you just get for free? "liquid-cooled NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs."
The only reason I'd want to take it down would be to bring it inside.