Sunburn—using excess energy of small-scale production for distributed computing

The Sunburn solar computer system is based on the idea of consuming the excess electricity of photovoltaic energy systems for useful computing. In this way, the proposed approach allows us to move a part of computing capacity from dedicated data centers to individual solar energy systems and thereby reduce the energy consumption of the data centers. In principle, the proposed mechanism converts the excess electrical energy into valuable computation. The results of computation or data processing are easier to store and transfer than produced electricity. In small-scale systems, the benefit from storing or selling the excess electricity is small, whereas the benefit from selling the generated data is potentially larger, as we demonstrate in this study. Finally, the technical feasibility of the solution is illustrated by constructing and evaluating a prototype implementation using excess solar energy for distributed BOINC computing.