What will be published before the first Genie ships

Element 31 has made a short list of things that must exist in public before any Genie ships. The list is short so that it can be kept. It is specifications, the hosting terms, and measured results from real homes, and the rest of this article says what each of those will contain and why none of it is available yet.

Specifications

The full specifications will say what Genie is and what it needs. That includes which rooftop-solar setups it is compatible with, how it reads the home's energy flow, what it asks of the home internet connection, how much room and air it wants, and how quiet it is. Genie is being designed for ordinary rooftop-solar homes with no battery required, and the specifications will say precisely what ordinary means.

Until the specifications are final, Element 31 describes Genie by its rules rather than by its figures: surplus only, never the grid; sealed work in and out; paid when sold; private by design. Those rules are settled. The figures that sit behind them are not, and will not be published until they are.

The hosting terms

Nobody buys a Genie. It is placed in the home at no cost to the household, and the household is paid when the computing it performs is sold. The hosting terms are the plain statement of that arrangement: how the machine is placed, what the household agrees to, and how payment follows the sale. They are not published yet, and Element 31 does not announce terms before they are final. When they are published they will be the terms, and anyone holding a reservation will either confirm a place on them or take an instant refund of the $100 deposit, which until then will have been fully refundable at any time with one click.

Reservations are not yet open. When they open, a reservation will not be a purchase; it will hold a place, and nothing ships until specifications, hosting terms, and measured performance are published.

Measured results, including the low ones

This is the part of the list that is unusual, and the part Element 31 considers most important. Before the first Genie ships, Element 31 will publish measured results from real homes running real Genies. Those results will include the homes that did poorly: the shaded roof, the household that used most of its own power, the grey stretch of weather, the week when demand was quiet.

Element 31 will never promise yields, returns, or passive income, and will not publish an average that hides the spread. The measured results will be presented as the range they are, with the low ones in plain view, so that a person deciding whether to confirm can see the worst case as clearly as the best. A Genie earns when, and only when, the computing it performs is sold, and the published results will show what that meant in practice across different homes.

Why nothing is announced early

Figures announced before they are final have a way of becoming promises, and promises about an in-development product are the kind that get broken. Element 31 would rather be asked why it has not published a figure than be asked why the figure was wrong. So specifications, the hosting terms, and measured results arrive together, when they are real, and the reservation is designed so that waiting for them costs the person waiting nothing.

Genie is in development. For how the reservation will work when reservations open, see that article. For why machines ship at the pace of sold work, see Demand first, then machines, and for the rules behind all of this, the principles page.