Is Genie a battery?

No. Genie is not a battery, does not contain one, and does not do what a battery does. A battery stores power made in the afternoon so the home can use it in the evening. Genie stores nothing. It takes the surplus the panels are making right now and converts it into computing work right now, and when the surplus goes, the work goes with it.

The confusion is understandable, because both devices are interested in the same thing: the power a solar home makes and does not immediately use. They just do opposite things with it. A battery keeps it for later. Genie spends it now, on work, and the household is paid when that work sells.

What Genie does with surplus instead

Genie joins E31 Cloud, which pools many small machines into computing capacity for businesses. The jobs are behind-the-scenes batch work that does not mind waiting for the sun. When the home has surplus, Genie draws on it and runs sealed jobs it cannot read. When the home needs the power back, Genie steps aside automatically, every time, and the job pauses.

Nothing comes back out as electricity. Genie never sends power to the grid and never sends power to the home. The only thing that leaves is encrypted results, over the home's ordinary internet connection, and the only thing the household gets back is payment for work that sold. No tokens. No mining. Dollars for work.

What that means after dark

Because Genie has nothing stored, it does nothing at night. It does not draw from the grid to keep going, under any circumstances. It waits for the morning, and the app shows the night as the quiet period it was. A cloudy day works the same way at a smaller scale: less surplus, less work, smaller figures, shown plainly.

This is a feature of the design rather than a limitation that a later version might remove. Storing power would make Genie a different product with a different relationship to the grid and to the household. Genie's rule is surplus only, never the grid, and that rule is enforced in the machine itself.

Genie in a home that already has a battery

Genie does not need a battery and is being designed for ordinary rooftop-solar homes without one. In a home that has one, the rules do not change. A charging battery is the home using power, and the home is served first, always, so Genie takes only what is left after the battery and the household have what they want. Exact compatibility with battery systems will be part of the full specifications published before anyone confirms a place.

Genie is in development. The longer treatment of the battery question is in Genie and a home with a battery, and the glossary entry on solar surplus explains the quantity both devices care about.