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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

#71

Post by sergiomattei »

I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. The power goes out every couple of days.

These products are a lifesaver in places where the electric grid is unreliable. Most Puerto Ricans rely on generators and battery backup devices to power their day-to-day life.

1) At the price point, lower-income countries with unreliable grids are not the target audience. If not that, then who? Off-grid wealthy individuals?

2) This app-controlled system MUST work offline. In wide-scale power outages, diesel generators in cell towers die out or get looted fairly quickly. Cable coax repeaters for home internet stop working almost immediately.

This latter scenario must be first in mind. Telecommunications will be gone in give or take 5 days after a large disaster or outage.

As for positive notes: loving the industrial design and battery mesh idea.

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

#72

Post by energygal »

syntaxing wrote: post #62

For what it’s worth, Biolite is trying to do something similar https://www.bioliteenergy.com/pages/backup . I personally love the idea, not needing a permit is already a great feature.

Agree, it's a great idea! I think this is quite a lot more affordable than biolite, and also has smart features that biolite lacks. Will be interesting when both products are in market and we can see some reviews.

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

#74

Post by choilive »

jorgen123 wrote: post #45

Would you be able to avoid leaking back into the grid? During a recent major weather event outage, a neighbor up the street was running a generator, that I think was not properly islanded. I experienced it by having some devices making weird sounds because they were receiving some low level voltage. They were probably leaking to tens of neighbors and losing generator output in the process.

This doesn't put power back through the home. It acts more like a UPS. You plug in the stuff you need up during an outage to the back of it like a power strip.

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

#75

Post by Glyptodon »

So what is the coordination between batteries doing? Is it moving electricity through the walls to balance things when the grid is down? How is it different than a typical UPS like for servers or other electronics? Just bigger/longer lasting battery? What integration need is their with typical home systems? (Beyond things like turning them off when battery gets low?)

I kind of don't really get what having an app for a battery does that just sticking UPSs everywhere doesn't, other than maybe having a better battery.

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

#76

Post by coleashman »

mrb wrote: post #67

What a noble mission to make energy independence more accessible like this, even to renters! I read your site, watched the video, but I still don't understand why you implemented a mesh network? Why multiple batteries need it to synchronize? Aren't they completely independent? Why would the fridge battery need to communicate with the other battery powering your lights? Also, as an angel investor, I'm curious to know…

To give more functionality around energy management, we wanted all of the batteries to be able to work in concert. We could have gone with "any old wireless" network to coordinate the batteries. One thing that's really stuck with me from building products at Span and Tesla is how important reliable connection is over years of operation. Depending on consumer wifi is a huge pain for reliability (changed passwords, inhomogeneous equipment, etc), using cellular is OK but has latency limitations and can be expensive. Existing stacks like Zigbee just had other limitations we wanted to avoid, so we realized borrowing from the world of the mesh wifi systems could offer a lot of what's needed. If we do our job right, the result will be a reliable connection over the years, that also facilitates easy addition of new battery nodes as you go, as your needs evolve.

re: funding, We've not yet made our detailed financing info public, but you can check out crunchbase for some insights on our investors to date!

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

#77

Post by coleashman »

teekert wrote: post #41
tw04 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) with an app. The UPS basically passes power from the wall to your fridge until there's a power outage. At that point it flips to using the battery to send power to your fridge.

But with the added benefit that it charges during the day on solar and then powers device during the night. My one question would be: does it work with home assistant? It would be great to integrate in te energy dashboard.

Yes re: Home Assistant. We're stoked to have folks integrate with their own energy dashboards if that's what they prefer to do.

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

#78

Post by gwbas1c »

josefresco wrote: post #7

So this is a per-room/per appliance battery system? Not sure how this would work for my oil burning boiler, which requires power but has no "plug". Maybe this is better for households that run 100% electric for HVAC?

Assuming your boiler is 120v, you can have an electrician install a "generator switch" that lets you plug in a generator directly to the boiler; or you can just rewire the boiler to a standard, 3-prong 120v plug.

The bigger issue is how many amps the heating system draws. Assuming it's really a furnace that pumps hot water, (as opposed to a boiler that sends steam to radiators) those pumps really do draw a lot of current.

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

#79

Post by coleashman »

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, and improve the design and usability to make it a more exciting and valuable product for more homes

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

#80

Post by sergiomattei »

pedalpete wrote: post #58

I love the design, but I wonder about the "selling feature". How many people regularly experience power outages (ok, if you're American relying on Canadian electricity, you might have a right to be concerned). I'm surprised you're not touting the "save on your power bill" benefits. Could this not store power when rates are low, and use the battery when rates are higher, while maintaining a balanced minimum storage am…

> ok, if you're American relying on Canadian electricity, you might have a right to be concerned

You don't have to go that far. Puerto Rico is a United States territory with a third-world tier power grid. Most Puerto Ricans rely on electric generators and battery backup systems to survive their day-to-day.

https://www.npr.org/2024/12/31/nx-s1-5243984/puerto-rico-pow...

This is bordering a humanitarian crisis and I'm surprised it gets little attention in the mainland. These outages have a real human cost: the elderly struggle with maintaining their generators. Hospitals rely on generators. Roads and sidewalks are in the dark. The haves get diesel delivered; the have-nots struggle. Some, especially the elderly, die in fires or asphyxia due to their constant operation.

https://www.univision.com/local/puerto-rico-wlii/hombre-muer...

https://www.primerahora.com/noticias/policia-tribunales/nota...

A woman died on New Year's Eve due to a fire in her residence while trying to operate a transfer switch. The power was out all night across the island.

https://wapa.tv/noticias/locales/falla-en-planta-el-ctrica-p...

Apologies for derailing, but it bothers me how little attention this gets. The privatized power company has successfully externalized its costs--thousands of Puerto Ricans are going into debt to install solar panels. Half of the island lives under the poverty line.

People are desperate. A year ago, the Dept of Energy established federal incentives for solar panel installations in the island. These were the kilometric lines to get a voucher:

https://www.telemundopr.com/noticias/puerto-rico/cientos-de-...

In short:

a) This is a real problem. Puerto Rico has 3.5 million American citizens, more than some states.

b) Battery backup systems, solar panel installations and generators are a necessity in these areas.

I wish this product was targeted towards lower income families, but any innovation in the space is welcome.

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