451–460 of 492 posts
I’m in the market for a solution like this but I have one concern. Will the software and schematics be made open if you go out of business or if your acquired and the product is cancelled or ceases being supported. If I invest in the product I want to know I can fix it if you can’t or won’t.
Local first, MQTT API is open from the beginning. No cloud or app needed. If we go under, we’ll open source the schematics to ensure they can be repaired.
Judging by the negativity here you're going to be a massive success -- search up the dropbox, airbnb, coinbase and ethereum launch threads if you want to feel good about where you're at. :) That said, I like this idea -- a modern coordinated UPS. I live in an area where people have 3-10 days a year of no power; being able to pick and choose what power they'd use during an outage would be a significant benefit to them…
> Judging by the negativity here you're going to be a massive success -- search up the dropbox, airbnb, coinbase and ethereum launch threads This is not a new product, though. Battery power inverters with AC and solar input are a popular class of products. You can buy similar products with higher capacity and better solar input at Costco or Best Buy. I think people are confused by the "Show HN" tag and the misleading…
I've already got multiple APC SmartUPSes in the house. They don't need to be networked together. And they've got multiple output sockets, not just two.
At 2.4kW max output, and 1.6kWh storage, you can't even run this thing at full power for an hour. I can do better with both APC and CyberPower.
And APC has slimline models that use lithium technology to come in around the same physical size, albeit at a higher price point.
It's pretty. It's networked, albeit via a proprietary wireless protocol. But I've never needed either of those things for any of my "point defense" UPSes.
I really don't think there's anything here that is worth spending any time or effort on.
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I'm curious about the Zigbee limitations you're alluding to. Bandwidth is limited for sure, but I would expect a sub-GHz mesh network to be even more limited. The only issue I could potentially see is that a Zigbee mesh might work great when the power is all on, but might suddenly partition once power is cut and some intermediate nodes suddenly go offline. That would be a surprising thing to happen in the middle of a…
Zigbee is on the same frequency as WiFi and therefore suffers from all the same issues that WiFi has interference and limited range. SolarCity used Zigbee for communication with solar inverters. It was very unreliable. Tesla moved to WiFi after acquiring SolarCity.
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Have you looked at any of the integrated options? Apparently a company in San Francisco put together 110V electric stoves with induction cooktops and integrated batteries --- they then sold them to folks applying for tax rebates to replace gas stoves in kitchens which weren't wired for 220V. One notable appliance you don't mention on your website is electric water pumps for wells in rural areas.... Similarly, are you…
> One notable appliance you don't mention on your website is electric water pumps for wells in rural areas.... We had a well in one of the houses we lived in when I was a kid, and its pump was wired directly to our mains panel. So this sort of thing wouldn't work with a Plia, which assumes you're dealing with stuff that plugs into a normal electrical outlet. Certainly this type of setup could be rewired to have an ou…
I'm in a '70s house, but even new builds I get the sense unless you're putting in a powerwall at build time, they aren't very interesting; just a meter and a load center and feeds. And maybe that's the way to do it, not do anything fancy until you put in a Powerwall or whatever, because then you aren't dealing with anything that isn't specifically set up for the devices you're installing.
I keep thinking about putting in a sub panel with a generator transfer switch, and pulling some of my critical loads to it (fridge, furnace, hot water), just so I'd have the option of easily running something off even an inverter running off lead acid. And I have some thoughts of gradually bringing in some of those rack-mount batteries to do backup power and some time shifting, maybe some solar. Though the Pila seems like an interesting device, but also has the downside of: I don't have space by my fridge to put the device, unless I put it in the crawl space underneath.
You keep mentioning MIDs, and you worked on Span, so you probably have some interesting ideas in this space.
I’m confused by two things… First: this is an electrical power source with a male plug… And I understand the intelligence inside of it, but… can this possibly be code compliant? Something similar to this is often referred to as a Suicide cord … Second: this is back-feeding electricity into the power grid and, again, I understand you can address this with onboard intelligence and millisecond switching… But I don’t thi…
It's a UPS. It doesn't do any back feeding. Compare it against APC SmartUPS and CyberPower.
Did I misunderstand?
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That’s much too conservative in opinion, at least around eggs, cheese and dairy.
In the US our store bought eggs are washed and are not safe to store unrefrigerated. If you get your eggs from the back of a hen it's a different story.
My fridge is set to 6C, I should have gotten sick long ago then.
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> How many people regularly experience power outages Anecdotally in a major city it was rare I would not have a power outage several times a year. In a more rural location now, it's rare I have a month without a power outage, some very extended. We have a backup generator and it has saved our frozen foods at least a dozen times over the last few years. Installing a backup generator costs about $10k for a whole house…
If Pila existed before you bought the generator, would you have bought a Pila? Does your generator require maintenance? Is it loud?
It does, and it is, but those are not super major factors.
I expect to save my pennies and do a whole house LiFePO4 bank at some point
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Probably but I'd rather never send that big of a pulse down a 15/20 amp line at all.
It's no more of a pulse than any other dead short that would trip the breaker instantly rather than on a delay. The fault current that a breaker is required to be able to interrupt is two orders of magnitude larger than we're talking about feeding into the wire, and a 15 amp breaker is designed to _not_ interrupt a 150 amp load until a second has passed (there's a rating curve for this): some loads might require that…
Doubly so because it doesn't even do what we want it to which would be to switch the main breaker off.
>What's been your experience with home batteries? I have set up a solar array to charge a couple of LiFePO4 batteries that I use to power a 12V water pump inside a rainwater tank that serves part of our garden. It's similar to a home built NAS using JBoD since I just bought things from different vendors instead of buying a prebuilt system to manage the tasks. I'm building it out to supply lights, heat and cooling so…
Thanks so much for taking the time to write such an in-depth, thoughtful set of questions and feedback! Thanks for sharing your experience re: the Feb 2021 freeze, and cool that you got your kid a big battery for their apartment! Which color would you like to see next? Sorry none of our current 4 match your palette! Unfortunately, as a capital constrained startup going super broad on colorways/SKUs is not very financ…
Geez. I knew this. I'm not sure why it didn't click with me yesterday.
The color that fits my stuff best is an organic green like olive, moss, or asparagus. No need for y'all to worry about that. I can always change the color here to fit or use velcro strips to wrap it in leather or a light fabric to complement the colors I have. I'm pretty handy.
I could picture needing a powerstrip for the extra outlets, especially for the Pila that powered my workstation/network setup. There are more than 4 devices needing clean power.
From the pictures on the site it appears that the expansion battery is a pure battery add-on with no additional outlets though it will have a port for connecting to a user solar array up to 1200W.
Other competitors spend time expounding on the benefits of having a portable, solar generator. When you look at their offerings they are similarly styled boxy rectangles that may be difficult to fit inside vehicle compartments. The advantage of the Pila is the layout geometry. Something with a flat profile like that can be made to fit in many commercially available pickup/camper/RV drawer units with no need to take up living space. It has much more deployment flexibility. You should consider a portable unit sized for those applications since the form factor is optimum for that user space.
Can you describe the method that your solar array will use to connect to the Pila and the expansion battery? Is it a fairly standard screw-type hold-down for the solar conductors, a plug-in, or a proprietary connection type? What is the wire gauge used in your solar panel cables and how long are the cables? I see that Pila uses dual MPPT input so that's probably the best flexibility for someone to be able to take best advantage of their local situation since it manages different string lengths, panel types, etc.
Thank you for the clear replies. I wish you all the best. This looks like a great product with flexible application and it is styled to look like it can fit with many common decor elements. Other similar units from competitors are nowhere near as cleanly stylish as the Pila.
If the handles could be made to pivot so that they laid flat against the sides when deployed that would reduce the long dimension (currently 26.5"/675mm) by around 3-4"/38-51mm and allow them to fit in less space. It would preserve the rectangular profile of the unit so that it looks more like a common piece of tech and a bit less like an industrial device. The handles could be recessed into the case with a positive lock in the closed position so that they don't flop down if deployed with the long axis vertical.
I really see the potential of something like this when your system can manage up to 64 Pila batteries (102 kWh!). That is huge capacity, far beyond residential requirements and really establishes Pila as a strong contender for use in commercial settings to function as backup and to aid commercial operations recovery after disasters. The closest I have seen is the EcoFlow unit which can be stacked up to 90 kWh capacity using their extra batteries in a three inverter setup.
If you're looking for test drivers let me know. I would be happy to test this product line and app to help you identify any stumbling blocks before your customers have the opportunity to complain. I have a bit of experience troubleshooting data processing software and acquisition hardware in the seismic industry and am a born button-pusher. If it can be made to fail, I can make it fail spectacularly at all the wrong times. Just kidding.
I'm not a You-Tuber. Anything I did would be for your internal use only to aid product development and verify functionality matches the information in the user documentation.
I'm in N Texas with a great view of the southern sky. We have massive thunderstorms with awesome lightning shows that sometimes take our CO-OP power down. Tornadoes are a common seasonal threat as well. We do experience brownouts and surges, more in the last 5 years than I can remember in the 25 years we've been here. That's why I have a couple of small UPS' to protect our electronics and why we are interested in building out our own solar capacity with battery storage to manage all those times when the CO-OP grid has problems.
Good luck.