This made me realize that I should get a UPS. After seeing the price tag, I'll search elsewhere!
What are you trying to power?What’s your budget?
Let us know what you get that is more capable than Pila.
Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
361–370 of 492 posts
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#362I 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-co…
Would financing help?
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#363This whole discussion is very confusing to me - is this just a UPS you have to plug all your items into, or does it somehow back feed into the plug to power the circuit? If it's the former it's nothing new and inconvenient, if it's the latter how do you avoid backfeeding the grid?
It's just a UPS with an app, as far as I can tell. The outlets are visible in the pictures, they're just hard to see.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#364I am a bit worried for the safety of these devices, due to their energy density. In Germany, a battery storage unit in a house recently exploded https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/schleswig-holstein/Nach-Explo...
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#365This whole discussion is very confusing to me - is this just a UPS you have to plug all your items into, or does it somehow back feed into the plug to power the circuit? If it's the former it's nothing new and inconvenient, if it's the latter how do you avoid backfeeding the grid?
It's just a UPS with an app, as far as I can tell. The outlets are visible in the pictures, they're just hard to see.
In the case I don't get the mesh network commentary and self healing talk - comes across as a total con job.
Wtf would I care about managing the real time draw from the grid for a tarted up UPS
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Well, you'd end up tripping the 15-20 amp breaker protecting those wires first.
Probably but I'd rather never send that big of a pulse down a 15/20 amp line at all.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#367> Most portable batteries are missing the functionality that makes a home battery useful: no bidirectional power
Soooo this product ?
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ex…
Why is this a safety issue? Home batteries are capable of detecting outages and ensuring that they don’t back-feed after an outage. Pila is no different.
Don't you work for Pila? Shouldn't you know that?
If you backfeed during an outage, and then the grid reconnects, you're fighting the grid. If you backfeed during an outage and an electrician is trying to fix lines near you, you can hurt them.
Why does the OP say it "disconnects in 20 ms of detecting an outage"? If it's a UPS, it doesn't need to disconnect - It's just no longer fed by the grid. If it's back-feeding, the point would be to _start_ the connection when you detect an outage. But backfeeding is an extremely bad idea.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ex…
There is some merit to using it with appliances like refrigerators and washing machines. No backfeeding needed.
So, a UPS, or a Jackery
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#370I like the idea and would probably reserve some if I still lived in the US.
But I don't think you should be setting yourself up against Powerwalls so directly. You're not really competing for the same market. The power storage solution for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls is in fact Powerwalls (or similar) if you have solar panels/want a serious amount of backup power storage.
Your offering is not that. In fact, I can imagine some people with Powerwalls might want to add your product to their house as well, so no point in immediately turning off that 0.3% in your messaging.