Local model enthusiasts often assume that running locally is more energy efficient than running in a data center, but fail to take the economies of scale into account.
It is a well known 101 truism in /r/Localllama that local is rarely cheaper, unless run batched - then it is massively, 10x cheaper indeed.
> I think they mean that the DeepSeek API charges are less than it would cost for the electricity to run a local model.
Because it is hosted in China, where energy is cheap. In ex-USSR where I live it is inexpensive too, and keeping in mind that whole winter I had to use small space heater, due to inadequacy of my central heating, using local came out as 100% free.
Note that while a local chatbot user will mostly be using batch-size = 1, it's not going to be true if they are running an agentic framework, so the gap is going to narrow or even reverse.
Our peak import rate is 3x higher than our solar export rate. In other words, we’d need to sell 3 kWh hours of energy to offset the cost of using 1 kWh at peak.
We’re currently in the process of accepting a quote for home batteries. The rates here highly incentivise maximising self-use.
And this is with no income tax or VAT on sold electricity.