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.
It also means battery in Spanish.
Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
141–150 of 492 posts
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Doesn't work and would likely cause fires.
First the smaller circuits will trip first, that's where the current is actually flowing, there wouldn't be any actually flowing through the whole house breaker in your idea. The main circuit to your house is 100+ Amps (this would be a tiny old circuit most houses have larger main feeds these days) at least. You'd have to feed at that much through the main disconnect for it to trip.
Second even if you could push that many amps through the main breaker somehow to trip it you'd be feeding it through wires designed for 15-20 amp nominal loads which would cook them.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#143Pila 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.
Big Pila Energy?
lol not the same in Brazilian, but interesting :)
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#144It 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 up electricity at night when it's cheap to use it during the day.
But this doesn't fit any of those categories. It's way too expensive to run a desktop computer, doesn't last anywhere near long enough for power outages from natural disasters, and isn't going to make a meaningful difference in your energy bill if a single device can only handle 5% of your home's daily energy needs.
And you don't even need it for a fridge/freezer -- it'll stay cold enough on its own for a day without power as long as you don't open it much.
I applaud the creativity, but I genuinely don't understand who the market is supposed to be?
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
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.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Adding another comment because I can no longer edit my original. - Power instability causes serious economic damage to individuals, families and small businesses. Imagine establishing a business in an island where you don't know if you'll have power today. - In PR, you don't buy groceries for an entire month. The power goes out once and all your food is ruined. Families bear the brunt of these reliability failures. -…
I support Puerto Rican statehood and representation in US federal elections†.
Until then, I don't see any hope of meaningful federal support in times of Puerto Rican crisis. Too many Americans are not sure whether Hawaii is a state, or if Rhode Island is an island. The amount of time that PR occupies anyone's thoughts in Real America™ is basically nil. Just like Trinidad, or Turks and Caicos. "Oh, I know someone who took a cruise there. They don't speak English do they?" That's it.
† I also support Puerto Rican self-determination and independence. :) But that path will not bring FEMA, or infrastructure investment.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#147I 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…
Great question. It’s 1.8kwh and 2.4kw out (7.8kw surge) can run a fridge for 2-3 days, and is meant as room for room backup. For sure you can build something yourself for cheaper - I have - but most Americans don’t. Only 0.03% of the US has home battery storage like Powerwall or a bank of LiFePo batteries, and the 99% uses diesel generators or waits it out.
That’s the part of the market we’re trying to simplify things for :)
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#148It 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.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#149Pila 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.
It also means battery in Spanish.
And Italian. It’s actually named after Alessandro Volta’s (the guy who named the Volt) name for the "Pila di Volta" - his stack of soaked rags that stored electricity, or what we'd nowadays call a battery stack. Pila is a Pile that stores electricity or a Battery - Pila :)
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#150So 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.
At first I thought it was some kind of UPS that would automatically "inject" AC to the house when it detected that there was no current in the mains (hence the connection to mains). But it seems it is just a glorified UPS... is that what the tesla "Wall" is?
A "no Electrician required" device that plugs into your wall and back-feeds power is a HUGE safety issue, and a HUGE no-no.
Half the problem with home-generation is a cutoff/sync device that synchronizes the frequency of your local generation with the grid, and kills power going back into the grid from your home generator when there is an outage, so line workers can do their jobs safely. And unless there is a more expensive/complicated device that can 'smear' the frequencys between the two systems slowly so they match after a disconnect/reconnect, most of these systems will shutdown local generation if there is no reference frequency from the main power feed.