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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

#121

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

rtkwe wrote: post #99
amluto wrote: post #65

Two questions: 1. Have you considered building a “microgrid interconnection device” to go with this to allow the batteries to backfeed a house in the event of an outage? (This would require native 240V split-phase capability and/or an auto-transformer.) 2. Have you considered removing the fade-in-when-scrolling abomination on your website?

1) Can't be automated without a failover switch to disconnect the house from the grid so it doesn't back feed into the actual power lines outside the house and either break or risk injuring linemen who think a line has been disconnected and isolated. In addition to that you're feeding energy back in through a much smaller wire so you're limited to the capability of the circuit it's connected to and the devices have t…

Feed power in through one circuit back to the main board, on a different circuit cause a short, main breaker trips, main board is now isolated from the grid.

Technically possible, irresponsible, bad advice, and probably won’t work in most scenarios.

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

#122

Post by the__alchemist »

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.

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

#123

Post by amluto »

coleashman wrote: post #70
amluto wrote: post #65

Two questions: 1. Have you considered building a “microgrid interconnection device” to go with this to allow the batteries to backfeed a house in the event of an outage? (This would require native 240V split-phase capability and/or an auto-transformer.) 2. Have you considered removing the fade-in-when-scrolling abomination on your website?

1. I'm actually hopeful we see a generic MID standard emerge with folks like ConnectDER well positioned to support that, so more homes can benefit and households can gain the ability to flexibly try different batteries without ripping out their panels every time. If not, we could definitely build our own (helped build 2 generations of Tesla's MID as well as 3 generations of SPAN Panels with MID functionality). Happy…

Huh, I hadn’t seen ConnectDER before. That’s cute. It’s not entirely clear to me how it interacts with power sources in the house, and it’s also not clear to me whether it’s standardized enough so that a different MID could be used in its place with the same inverters/batteries/whatever. I would love to see the industry standardize on a MID protocol well enough for applications like V2H/V2G to work without absurd levels of vendor lock-in.

I suppose another potential issue would be exceeding the capacity of a panel bus. Balcony solar has the same problem, and I guess no one os likely to connect enough balcony solar units to cause a real problem.

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

#125

Post by srgpqt »

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…

Having a garage sure does sound nice!

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

#126

Post by PeterStuer »

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…

It surely sounds like your regular UPS.

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

#127

Post by Aurornis »

TL;DR: $999 pre-order price, $1299 retail for UPS.

It does not compare to or replace Powerwall and similar backup solutions. It's a UPS with 4 x 120V outlets and some USB ports. It has inputs for a single 100W solar panel.

Looks polished, but I think the marketing department really got carried away with everything on this one.

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

#128

Post by CharlesW »

Nextgrid wrote: post #101
CharlesW wrote: post #54

From your site: "For homes with electricity prices that vary throughout the day, Pila optimizes charging to help manage your utility bills." Based on experiments like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtNq-0kV8YM , I'm extremely skeptical. Can you back this claim? Also, why are people going to spend $1,300 on this when a good UPS is a fraction of the price, and (for example) an Anker SOLIX F3800 Plus is $3,200?

That video's conclusion is misleading - he's only shifting his fridge's energy consumption. That's not actually much in the grand scheme of things - it's a well-insulated box that is already a thermal battery. In fact, he only discharged his power bank to 64% at the end of the day, so he didn't even use up his full capacity (that he paid for and is factored in his spreadsheet). Batteries can provide significant savin…

> I believe the Pila can technically do the above, although its battery capacity is probably too small to ever recoup its purchase price on this type of arbitrage.

That's my point, thank you for putting it so succinctly. The front page opens showing the Pila being used for a refrigerator — presumably doing load shifting, given the front page marketing copy I quoted — so I think asking for data showing that this is a legitimate use case is fair.

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

#129

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

luis_cho wrote: post #106
vasco wrote: post #96

Pila means cock (as in dick) in Portuguese and this whole post and website are hilarious. Dick energy. I'm holding off tears. Definitely wouldn't recommend plugging in your pila into any outlet.

One time set-up: 1- Plug Pila in :D

The results are shocking!

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

#130

Post by blcknight »

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…

I wouldn't call 1.6kWh tiny, running your fridge and charging phones for a day will have a big market in places that might get outages during the winter that last a day or two. How about apartment dwellers in cities? Not everyone needs something gigantic or permanent.

They support up to 1200W of solar with the expansion pack. Running a cable out a window during a prolonged outage doesn't seem like a huge deal, but I'd guess most of the use case is shorter outages The solution is far cheaper than something like the Tesla powerwall (which I have and adore, but it's definitely a bigger investment).

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