Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally remember sh*tting on doordash...what a stupid idea.
But this product isn't actually a new concept. Competing products have been out for years with better specs and prices, even.
Which ones?
Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
301–310 of 492 posts
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#303Judging 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…
Entering an existing market with nothing new but a sleek, Apple-like UI that makes it eady for the average user has proven to be a business success again and again. And it's had detractors who turned out to be wrong ever since "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." If not before.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and the misleading way it's being compared to a Powerwall, despite not being a comparable product 100% this. I had to read a whole wall of text to get to "it's a really fancy UPS". Definitely places that will be useful, but I think a lot of people here are far more excited by the possibilities of products like Powerwall which move us towards a greener future than by large, stylish batteries.
Solar & wind are variable, we need more storage on the grid to charge when these sources are abundant and discharge when they aren’t. Pila offers the same greener future that Powerwall does & makes it so everyone (home owner, renter, condo, or apartment dweller) can be part of this greener future.
> Solar & wind are variable, we need more storage on the grid to charge when these sources are abundant and discharge when they aren’t. Pila offers the same greener future that Powerwall does & makes it so everyone (home owner, renter, condo, or apartment dweller) can be part of this greener future.
This account's first comments started 4 days ago on another Pila thread. It says "This is awesome! The end of power outages for all of us!"
I'm going to guess this is another Pila employee.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Entering an existing market with nothing new but a sleek, Apple-like UI that makes it eady for the average user has proven to be a business success again and again. And it's had detractors who turned out to be wrong ever since "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." If not before.
> Entering an existing market with nothing new but a sleek, Apple-like UI that makes it eady for the average user has proven to be a business success again and again
The competing products also have apps with good UIs.
This is a marketing play. It appears to be working, given how many people are convinced it's a new idea.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#306[deleted]
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've misread the table. 40F for 2 hours is the guideline. A typical fridge is around 35-38F. Anecdotally my parents had a fridge fail recently and the food heated up alarmingly quickly.
Sounds like your parents fridge was poorly insulated, and thus consumed way more electricity than a modern fridge needs to.
I tried to warn them about french doors...
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in an area where we get a handful of outages every year. From a few hours to a few days. My current setup is a 2.8Kv generator I haul our of the shed, run a few extension cords to core things like fridge/freezer, internet, office etc. This is a nice fit between a generator and a Powerwall. Generator is a pain if you have to setup + if not home the fridge stays off or my wife will leave to me unless its urgent.…
I looked through the material, but I'm still at a loss how this is different than any recent battery/inverter combination like Ecoflow/Jackery/etc or a UPS with an app. I'm an electrician, and very in to new electrical products but this one just makes me wonder how it's different.
Look up most of those products and you can see that they aren’t meant to be used daily, kept charged at 100% etc.. This is a commercial energy product scaled down to a consumer level, not a camping battery with a shiny exterior.
Also their apps are bad and don’t offer anything of value.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#309I'd love to have better backup power but I'm skeptical of huge lithium batteries inside my home.
Here's a tiny scooter battery going on fire spontaneously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld00r-tEEJ4
Can we use something other than lithium for home battery backups? Weight isn't really a concern.
Re: Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great points! This is meant as whole room backup - so it’ll keep your fridge (and a few other small devices like wifi, etc) running for 2-3 days - a pretty long outage. It’s basically a huge, 21st century UPS. It can also do arbitrage and charge when it’s cheap and deploy the power when it’s expensive. The main problem with a powerwall is it doesn’t work for renters, and costs 20,000+ (and permits, etc) if you do own…
I can’t afford something like this but I would absolutely get something similar to this if I could. My sump pumps are literally one of my biggest home ownership worries.
You should address that with exterior grading and diverting gutter run off so far away from the structure that it can’t seep back toward your basement.
If water can get in, it will. And it will do it when your sump is not operating.
If you’ve already addressed it externally and you’re still seeing water come in, then you didn’t address it completely. End state should a totally passive system where the sump never even fills.
And if that doesn’t work, sell the house and get one on top of a hill!