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Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

pilaenergy.com

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Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#151

Post by chadconway »

crazygringo wrote: post #144

It looks beautiful. But I honestly don't understand what the market is. OP answered in one of the comments that it will run a single fridge for 32 hours. I understand the benefits of a UPS that will run your desktop computer during a brief power outage of a couple of hours. And I understand a generator that will keep your house running for 10 days after a natural disaster. And I understand a Powerwall that can suck u…

Backup can be extended to 62 hours through an expansion pack. A foldable solar array can be plugged in as well to extend backup indefinitely for long outages.

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#152

Post by Velorivox »

turtlebits wrote: post #117

I don't understand this. It's a tiny backup battery with an expensive enclosure, with only 100W of solar input? How are you expected to run solar wiring with this in your living room? The places that can afford this rarely have power outages, so having an dedicated appliance sitting in your living room or kitchen for those 1-2 times a year doesn't make sense. The capacity is barely enough to run your fridge for a day…

Recently I had a power outage due to a storm, and the first thing I did the next morning was go to the store and get several bags of ice, which I put into the fridge and freezer. The fridge was still cold enough several days later when power was finally restored.

This could still have been useful if we weren't home, but as you said these things happen so rarely here that I cannot see myself getting something like this, especially for the fridge since ice just works.

To be fair though, it did mean we could not open the fridge willy-nilly, maybe that helped me lose some weight...

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#153

Post by quesera »

jodoherty wrote: post #148
crazygringo wrote: post #144

It looks beautiful. But I honestly don't understand what the market is. OP answered in one of the comments that it will run a single fridge for 32 hours. I understand the benefits of a UPS that will run your desktop computer during a brief power outage of a couple of hours. And I understand a generator that will keep your house running for 10 days after a natural disaster. And I understand a Powerwall that can suck u…

I might get this for my basement sump pump in case the power goes out during a storm.

A suitable UPS for that application costs less than $100.

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#154

Post by VectorLock »

Tade0 wrote: post #140
Rebelgecko wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In places like Germany it's supposedly becoming more common to have a solar panel on the balcony and use a similar plugin device. I think the legal situation in the US is more tricky unfortunately

Not only in Germany, as per Commission Regulation EU 2016/631 systems under 800W are not regulated as power generating facilities - you just need a two-way meter installed on request by your power company and you're good to go.

Does the two-way meter have a way to prevent back feeding the grid in the event of a power outage? Having an unregulated device even under 800W seems like it could be dangerous to anybody working on the power lines.

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#155

Post by VectorLock »

coleashman wrote: post #79
gwbas1c wrote: post #73

So it's just a smarter UPS, (that can integrate with solar panels) but you only compare it to a standby generator. Seems like you need to compare it to a UPS too, because that's what it really, really is.

This audience is definitely more up on tech - I've been surprised how often folks I talk to have never heard of UPS's! We know we're not the first people to think of automatic plug in backup :) Aspirationally, we aim to do to the UPS what the Powerwall did to the lead acid battery bank -- Bring it into the 21st century, level up to better technology, add software intelligence so it's not sitting idle 99% of the time,…

>add software intelligence so it's not sitting idle 99%

Its a battery backup, how would it not be sitting idle 99% of the time?

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#156

Post by nikodunk »

crazygringo wrote: post #144

It looks beautiful. But I honestly don't understand what the market is. OP answered in one of the comments that it will run a single fridge for 32 hours. I understand the benefits of a UPS that will run your desktop computer during a brief power outage of a couple of hours. And I understand a generator that will keep your house running for 10 days after a natural disaster. And I understand a Powerwall that can suck u…

Great points! This is meant as whole room backup - so it’ll keep your fridge (and a few other small devices like wifi, etc) running for 2-3 days - a pretty long outage.

It’s basically a huge, 21st century UPS.

It can also do arbitrage and charge when it’s cheap and deploy the power when it’s expensive.

The main problem with a powerwall is it doesn’t work for renters, and costs 20,000+ (and permits, etc) if you do own your home.

A pull-sting generator (gas) is great - and a push-button one is around 1K also btw- but it doesn’t go on automatically if you’re out, and be noisy, can only be started after the hurricane, etc

Finally, local-first is super important to us for outage or otherwise - we integrate with Home Assistant and have public MQTT topics you can directly hook into no matter what happens to Pila the company, as long as your hardware lasts (predicted 10 years).

Idk - that’s where we feel like the position and gap in this market is? But we may be wrong :)

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#157

Post by turtlebits »

trescenzi wrote: post #145
turtlebits wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of these devices in general as I'm more of a DIY, but... A Ecoflow Delta 2 Max is $1100, gives you 2kWh capacity and 1000W of solar input. if you have a power outage, you can actually keep it topped off w/ solar while keeping your fridge, gas furnace, etc running. If you're gonna hang a wire out the window, why pay the premium for the pretty enclosure and screen?

Not to hard pivot but any DIY links you’d recommend? I’ve been getting into this field and would like to DIY something around this scale. Keep a fridge running, maybe have a little dc circuit for a home lab.

Will Prowse on youtube a great resource.

For <$1000, you can get a 3-5kWh system (battery+solar charge controller+inverter)

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#158

Post by nikodunk »

Velorivox wrote: post #152
turtlebits wrote: post #117

I don't understand this. It's a tiny backup battery with an expensive enclosure, with only 100W of solar input? How are you expected to run solar wiring with this in your living room? The places that can afford this rarely have power outages, so having an dedicated appliance sitting in your living room or kitchen for those 1-2 times a year doesn't make sense. The capacity is barely enough to run your fridge for a day…

Recently I had a power outage due to a storm, and the first thing I did the next morning was go to the store and get several bags of ice, which I put into the fridge and freezer. The fridge was still cold enough several days later when power was finally restored. This could still have been useful if we weren't home, but as you said these things happen so rarely here that I cannot see myself getting something like thi…

100%! This is a great solution, many people also freeze a glass of ice and put a coin on top so if there is an outage when they’re out, the coin will be frozen at the bottom when they get back (and they know their meat won’t be any good).

Pila is meant more as a set-and-forget solution if you want something seamless and connected.

Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls

#159

Post by VectorLock »

the__alchemist wrote: post #122
abetusk wrote: post #51

1.6 KWh capacity with 2.4 KW output [0]. I couldn't find a price on the website (the $99 is just for a reservation) but from this thread it looks like it's priced at $1k [1]. For context, in the USA, 30 KWh is a rough estimate for average daily home usage [2]. [0] https://pilaenergy.com/tech-specs#faq [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43333996 [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit...

Given these stats and the price in the sister comment, this costs $24,400 for a day of backup. This makes the LCD displays on the front page of the website listing "5 days 6 h ours" and similar on a single unit very misleading. That amount of backup would cost $128,000.

I assume it least has enough smarts to only show the battery capacity for whats in it. It can't run a whole house, so comparing it against an entire household's average load might be unrealistic.
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