Sunrun Offers Solar Users Hundreds Per Month in Compute Program
(Bloomberg) -- Sunrun Inc. is piloting a program aimed at enabling customers to earn hundreds of dollars per month that would use electricity from rooftop solar and battery installations to power home-computing systems for AI, according to Chief Executive Officer Mary Powell.
The company is in talks with potential technology customers to tap “mini data-center capabilities” of those systems, Powell said Monday on Bloomberg TV.
Sunrun unveiled its distributed AI compute program last week as part of an effort by the company to tap into the demand from data centers for electricity and computing power. Shares of the nation’s biggest home solar company have slumped more than 30% this year due to investor concerns about a contraction in its main business after the federal tax credit for buying panels was eliminated.
Under the new Sunrun program, customers could make money for hosting a computer the size of a small filing cabinet. The computing capability would be aggregated and sold to technology companies racing to build out data center capacity for artificial intelligence. Sunrun said it expects to complete the pilot over the coming months and will assess the results before launching a broader rollout.
Sunrun is offering customers “another way to use that energy, if they choose, and to get compensated for it,” Powell said of the AI computing pilot program. “It could range from a couple hundred dollars to more than that in a month.”
The company has yet to release details on the economics or buyers of the distributed computing power.
Separately, Sunrun announced an agreement with Tesla Inc. and Renew Home to aggregate more than 16 gigawatts of flexible home energy capacity for hyperscalers and utilities. The company has yet to announce a buyer of that capacity.
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