Smart electrical panel manufacturer Span has announced a new partnership with technology and semiconductor giant Nvidia to develop XFRA, a network of devices that convert unused electrical capacity in homes and small businesses into a distributed computing cloud.
The network works by placing XFRA Nodes at customers’ homes and businesses and coordinating them to serve the data center workload. According to a video posted by Span CEO Arch Rao on LinkedIn, each node contains Dell PowerEdge servers with 16 Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPUs, 4 AMD EPYC CPUs and 3 TB of RAM, connected to a 24-port gigabit switch.
The nodes are connected to a customer’s building via a Span smart service panel, which detects how much energy the customer is using at a given point and manages the nodes as permanent loads.
In a white paper on the The company’s solution allows homes to use nearly 100% of their estimated service from the utility.
For a house with a 200 A power supply, 40% of the potential power consumption represents 80 A, or 19.2 kW at 240 V.
A whole-house battery installed adjacent to the XFRA nodes will serve to protect computing workloads, buffer short-term demand peaks, and respond to utility demand response events. During a power outage, the network transports the computing workload away from the affected nodes and provides the host customer with backup power.
The whitepaper shows that Span has already tested prototypes internally with paying customers, and the company is now planning a proof of concept for the third quarter of 2026, during which it will deploy 100 nodes in residential new-build homes.
In an interview with pv magazine USASpan CRO Ryan Harris revealed that the proof of concept program will take place in a southwestern state – likely Nevada or Arizona.
The company plans to scale up the XFRA network to an annual capacity of more than 1 GW from 2027.
Providing benefits to stakeholders
As Span envisions, the XFRA network will provide benefits to multiple stakeholders, something it calls “a win-win-win in the energy and computing ecosystem.” For data hyperscalers, the network would provide a flexible way to access computing power that doesn’t require a central data center. This means it avoids the need to engage in the years-long process of obtaining permits, obtaining utility interconnection approvals, building the project and ultimately obtaining permission to operate.
In data center development, the time it takes for a site to access electricity is often referred to as ‘speed-to-power’, and this is often a bottleneck in the development process. As of early 2025, the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies noted delays of up to 7 years in the country’s largest data center markets.
For utilities, the XFRA solution provides a way to increase grid utilization, meaning more power can flow to more customers, more often. The company says this allows network operators to generate more revenue from existing network infrastructure, which is often operating well below capacity.
Homeowners and small businesses that host the nodes will enjoy multiple benefits. Span says it will install the Span smart panel and battery backup at no cost to the host and will also offer them discounted rates for electricity and internet. Harris went a step further and suggested that some homeowners in places where XFRA nodes provide the most value could receive “electricity discounts up to and including free electricity and free internet access.”
How the economy works
Span expects the XFRA nodes to be powered under standard residential rate structures. While the initial locations for the proof of concept will be places with relatively low fixed rates, Harris said he sees XFRA as a national solution. “We think the need for inference computing will be deployed geographically where there are population centers, or where there are applications for AI use cases and AI workloads,” he said.
Residential retail rates vary widely by state, which could somewhat complicate the ROI of deploying XFRA nodes in high-cost markets. However, Harris notes that the company has already received inquiries from utilities considering “innovation in the rate model” that would allow for lower rates.
The company says customers can add an optional solar installation to their system, something Harris says could help the economy in expensive markets. “The base model (XFRA host) does not require behind-the-meter solar,” he said, adding that solar could be “an aspect of the overall site-level infrastructure” that “makes the overall economics of the solution more favorable and/or meets some other requirements or features that a computing vendor may want to achieve.”
Harris said he expects Span would work with a third party to provide a behind-the-meter power purchase agreement to keep the relationship between Span and the host customer simple.
Even in places with higher rates, the potential revenue from selling AI computing services presents huge opportunities for Span.
In a social media post, Abe Yokell, co-founder of Congruent Ventures (an early and ongoing investor in Span) explained the economics of delivering 19.2 kW of power from 50,000 homes, a total of almost 1 GW of power combined. Based on an estimate by Nvidia, 1 GW of data center power is needed $50 billion in capital expendituresYokell stated that each of the 50,000 nodes could represent $1 million in asset value.
In the long term, Harris sees the possibility that a solution like XFRA could deliver broader benefits for all energy payers. Citing a report from the Brattle Group called “The Untapped Grid,” he pointed out that adding new loads when and where spare capacity already exists allows utilities to better utilize the physical assets for which ratepayers already have to cover the costs, with higher revenues reducing the relative impact the costs of these investments have on rates for all customers.
“If we can add seven to 12 kilowatts of continuous load behind the meter running within that existing distribution system, we take the numerator – the number of kilowatt hours sold – and raise that quite substantially above the denominator – the amount of capital investment in the distribution system that’s already built,” he said. “The principle is that we increase the utilization of the existing electricity grid, and therefore reduce electricity prices per kilowatt hour.”
Harris described the effect as a “synergistic, virtuous cycle,” but noted that it was far too early in the process to make any promises about the knock-on effects of the XFRA program. Still, he noted that the idea that improvements in network usage could yield network-wide benefits could emerge within a few years.
“If we start doing the right things now, we will be able to change the shape of that curve or the slope of that curve in a way that really creates value for everyone. It’s not measured in weeks, but it’s not a decades-long quest,” he said.
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