Span Installs Prototype Home-Based XFRA Data Center Nodes in Northern California

California-based Span has deployed prototype data center nodes in Northern California in partnership with Nvidia. The cabinet-sized units, dubbed XFRA, are installed on the sides of homes and small businesses. Requiring no fans, the XFRA technology is quiet.

Ryan Harris, chief revenue officer of Span, said the company estimates XFRA will generate about one to two megawatts worth of compute later this year. Harris said XFRA will scale across the country to an annual capacity of more than 1 gigawatt beginning next year. , is testing the XFRA system.

Nvidia will provide the liquid-cooled RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs for the XFRA system. "We do see a path to being able to contribute on an annual basis hundreds of megawatts, if not gigawatts, of scale compute capacity, while doing so in a deflationary-to-energy-price way," Harris told Fortune.

Span can install nodes at six-times the speed of centralized 100-megawatt data centers and at about one-fifth of the cost of construction of centralized 100-megawatt data centers.

The company charges a flat monthly fee of about $150. In return for the $150 monthly fee, Span pays a host’s electricity and internet bills. The computing power generated from the XFRA nodes is distributed to customers like hyperscalers and AI companies.

Span states that XFRA is not designed to replace commercial data centers but to reduce strain on the grid. Heata, a UK-based startup, has installed units in about 100 homes. The company claims to have saved about 1 gigawatt-hour of energy.

About 70% of the saved energy comes from less need to use domestic gas or electric heating systems in homes while the remaining 30% of the saved energy comes from less need to cool data center processors. A Heata spokesperson told Fortune the company has generated 8 million liters of hot water. The generated hot water has saved homes about $55,000 on energy bills.

McKinsey projected AI infrastructure capital expenditures to touch $7 trillion by 2030. Goldman Sachs research states data centers could drive up electric bills by 6% over the next year. Two data center developments, one in Arizona and one in Georgia, took public water without authorization.

A recent study by the Houston Advanced Research Center projected data centers would drain as much as 399 billion gallons of water in Texas alone by 2030. U.S. Marine living in Saline Township, Michigan, recently told Fortune she is nervous about the environmental impact of a future data center site across from her home.

Robert Davies is a physics professor at Utah State University. Davies calculated only 30%-40% of homes may be suitable for mini data centers due to integration constraints, stable internet needs, and participant willingness. Davies calculated only 2%-3% of homes could realistically be heated through alternative energy-harnessing technologies due to waste heat collection constraints.