Ant nodes for micro power generators?

Ant-Node (was Safe-node)
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I wonder if there is a business angle around home power generation and running nodes too?

Assuming network participation doesn’t burden the routers (once antnode is fully refined), it could be an interesting way to make surplus energy pay.

There have been discussions on this many times for blockchains, but making that profitable with commodity hardware is hard these days. Gone are the days of small, home, miners for the big coins. For antnodes, maybe the numbers will work better though?

If we could use tiny refurbished devices with a basic linux build on them, they could be powered during periods of surplus only (by default), i.e. windy/sunny depending on generation. These devices could be sub £100 or less. Maybe sub £50 if right sized.

These devices could then monotise that excess power and help to support the network. As long as the return exceeds export rates and remains cheaper than battery storage, there should be an economic benefit.

Forming local partnerships with renewable energy installers could be a first step. Given their size, they may accept the risk, especially if there is no cost. They could take a cut of the earnings too, potentially. Indeed it could be a joint incentive between the owner, the installer and the antnode builder.

It would be good to understand the revenue per node of a well connected device could be. Given unmetered internet, combined with free generated energy, the profit margin should be high. If revenue is sufficient, it will pay back the capital cost of the device, then provide an ongoing profit share between the participants.

If we started a movement like this globally, it would be a massive foundational support for the network. It would also give incentives for these power generators to use the network (and its tokens) too.

Longer term, getting deals with bigger generators may be feasible, including the likes of wind/solar farms that get paid to disconnect when the grids hit capacity. Indeed, they could still run nodes while shutting down the grid connections. Off shore could even use satellite internet. Likely powerful, non-commodity, hardware for antnodes too! :sweat_smile:

Starting small and buidling up, forming local partnerships, etc, could be a real nice way to start though.

Edit: moving to dedicated topic

Inspired by this thread: Best Safe Node hardware - #1004 by Traktion

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Interesting concept indeed. In the Netherlands we still have a subsidy that enables home owners to use their surplus of energy generated by solar in the summer to consume in the winter. Basically acting as a giant battery that stores the energy generated during summer for winter use. This isn’t a sustainable approach so they are ending this within the next few years.

This solution though can act again as some sort of battery to transfer the surplus from summer to winter by transforming it into money.

Thinking about this. The heath generated during winter could as well be used to warm our houses. And it is even beneficial in the summer when we need to heat up water for shower etc.

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Pondering some more, we could also throw some apps on the box. Adding sn_httpd could be handy, for example. I actually do this on my ant node runner too already and it’s nice to have it available for all my devices (either as a proxy or a gateway).

I’ve not tried it yet, but maybe this too: Formicaio

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Home power generation is not for the ‘faint of heart’. As a hobby biz, I have worked on such setups since 2007. The key is to get a good battery setup (as prime mover to your home or section running your ‘micro data center’ and triple tie the battery charge controller configuration into 1 the public grid, 2 wind (if you have a decent site) and 3 solar where the public grid is the ‘trickle’ battery charge system of last resort, should there be no wind or solar power being generated.

@Traktion If you have a stream near by , its possible to run a micro hydro generator diverting some flow into a pool and then back into the stream via the hydro generator (best but a rare property find).

Then you need a decent ISP connect, a way to passively cool all your gear… all doable, but one needs to ‘crunch the numbers’ to make it work financially.

In NA, likely the best ‘cheap’ source for a lot of this stuff is Missouri Wind and Solar https://windandsolar.com/ , mws have been sourcing and building products and complete home connect and battery charge wind/solar/hydro gen and battery store solutions for such setups for quite awhile and the owner imo, is a real garage shop engineer building and testing and selling and supporting all the above stuff. Maybe in UK and EU there are similar?

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We had solar PV installed a few years ago by a local company. It was painless. They just came, installed the panels, wired them up, then left, pretty much.

We don’t have a battery, as our export rates in Northern Ireland are pretty good (18p last year, 15p this, iirc). We can’t get the dynamic pricing that they get in GB though, which may be better/worse.

I’d consider batteries if/when they become economical. Our goal wasn’t to go off grid, but save money longer term. So far, so good on that. Batteries would be cool when they are at EV price levels per kwh, but lots of rip off prices on high voltage gear it seems!

Relative to OP, the goal would really be to just have a small/simple device. Maybe it wouldn’t even use much of that excess power up, but it would be a good use of it… better than export rates is the low bar, as long as the hardware is cheap/refurbished stuff (that isn’t only ready for the bin…).

Ofc, catering for the ‘homelab’ crowd is a rather different prospect. They will have advanced gear and expectations. I suspect there are many more folks who would just be happy to plugin a book sized box and let it whir away for some payback. The adventurous could always add more too.

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The only chemistry that will get you to $US 35.00/kWhr of storage is ZincAir. Lithium will never get there, its too scarce and most of it is hard rock and costly to process. Zinc in the ‘zinc sulfide’ ZNS form is on every continent, everywhere and much less costly to recover and process., even though the power density is 65% of Lithium based batteries. Redflow in Australia has Zincbromine figured out for hot weather sites. In NA, there is https://www.abound.energy/ which previously was Zinc8 Energy Solutions (and others), and a couple of others which have finally cracked the US $100/kWhr floor, its only a matter of time , as these vendors size it for homes (and get away from grid scale which is a waste of time) , imo next 3-5 years we will see sub US $50/kWhr without taxpayer subsidies. Think mini-fridge size systems, up to full size fridge. for ZincAir home systems.

CN has an easy go of it right now and big price lead because their Lithium is locked in mud/silt strata and open pit mined with really cheap labour, but their supply is dwindling slowly and they are heavily invested in foreign hard rock reserves (Canada and America)

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gone bust . .

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Sad to hear, probably way too early.