Surplus in, work out

A rooftop solar system makes power on its own schedule, and a home uses power on another. For much of a bright day the panels make more than the house can use. Genie is built for that gap. It takes the surplus, turns it into computing work while the surplus exists, and steps aside the moment the home wants the power back.

That is the whole shape of the appliance: surplus in, work out. Everything else about Genie is a consequence of holding to that shape.

What counts as surplus

Surplus is the power the panels make that the home is not using right now. It is not a forecast and not an average. Genie watches the home's energy flow and draws only when the panels are producing more than the home is consuming. If a kettle switches on and the margin disappears, Genie backs off automatically, every time.

Genie never draws from the grid and never sends power to it. The home is served first, always. This is enforced inside the machine rather than promised in a policy document, which is the reason it can be stated so plainly.

What the work is

The surplus becomes computing. Genie joins E31 Cloud, a network that pools many small machines into useful capacity for businesses. The jobs are behind-the-scenes batch work: the kind of processing that does not mind waiting for the sun and can be split across many quiet machines in many homes.

Jobs arrive sealed, run sealed, and leave sealed. Genie cannot read them. The household cannot read them. The customer who ordered the work can verify exactly what ran. The household's part is to provide the surplus and the ordinary home internet connection the work travels over; the content of the work is not theirs to see, and nothing about the home is the customer's to see either.

What comes out the other end

When the work is sold to a paying customer, the household is paid. When it is not sold, the household is not paid, and the app says so. The app shows energy used, work performed, work sold, and money owed, in that order, because that is the order things happen in. A quiet day of demand shows as a quiet day.

Element 31 does not promise yields, returns, or passive income, and will not. Genie earns when, and only when, the computing it performs is actually sold. Quiet demand means quiet earnings. No tokens. No mining. Dollars for work.

What Genie is not

Genie is not a battery. It stores nothing. When the sun goes behind a cloud, the work pauses; when the sun sets, the work stops until morning. It does not shift power from the afternoon to the evening, and it does not sell power back to anyone. It converts surplus into work in the moment, and that is all.

It is also not something that watches the house. Genie reports its own energy use and health, and nothing else. It makes only outbound connections and never accepts incoming ones.

Genie is in development, and the household never pays for the hardware. Before the first Genie ships, Element 31 will publish specifications, the hosting terms, and measured results from real homes, including the low ones. Reservations are not yet open; when they open, a reservation will not be a purchase: it will hold your place, it will be fully refundable at any time with one click, and nothing ships until specifications, hosting terms, and measured performance are published. The full rule set is on the principles page, and the mechanics are on how it works.