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

2025-03-1115:48301480pilaenergy.com

Meet the next-generation home battery.

Homepage_Loop_Thumbnail_4K.jpg

Get days of automatic backup power — Smart, silent, and safe.

Whether you own or rent, there’s no rewiring necessary — Pila connects to a standard wall outlet

Smart software optimizes your home energy year-round and notifies you of anomalies

Pila provides seamless, silent backup power — Whether you’re home or away.

Get instant outage notifications and see exactly how much backup time you have left.

No tools, no rewiring — Pila plugs into a standard 120-volt wall outlet.

Power passes through Pila’s onboard battery to appliances and devices.

Our Battery Mesh Network makes it easy to add Pila to new rooms and appliances across your home. Pairing takes seconds.

Pila immediately starts working in the background to protect you from blackouts and optimize your energy.

With right-sized power for your budget, Pila is backup power designed to grow with your needs.

  • Monitor and control your home from anywhere in the world

  • Smarter over time with free over-the-air software updates

  • iOS & Android

  • Free — No subscription fees

Pila’s first-of-a-kind Battery Mesh Network coordinates all Pila batteries across your home to store solar or utility power, and optimizes that energy for outage protection, bill savings and more. Pila keeps working even if home internet goes out.

For homes with electricity prices that vary throughout the day, Pila optimizes charging to help manage your utility bills.

Configure Pila to charge from solar energy you produce at home. Use stored solar energy at night to boost your home’s energy self sufficiency.

( No solar? No problem. )

Pila works with and without solar. Or, connect temporary plug-in solar panels directly to Pila for easy savings.

Pila gives you effortless control over your home’s energy. Get smart outage alerts with backup time forecasts, so you always know how long power will last. Prioritize essential devices with intelligent outlet control. Save energy, reduce waste, and extend appliance life—all with built-in intelligence and seamless automation. Simple. Smart. Pila.

  • Track Fridge Temperature — Stay ahead of food spoilage and curb wasted energy with Pila’s wireless in-fridge temperature sensors.

  • The Kitchen Clock That’s Never Wrong — Always accurate and connected. Pila’s display keeps perfect time through outages and can be customized with weather, timers, your family calendar + more.

  • Fridge Door Alerts — Left the door open? Pila catches it before your groceries go warm, sending a notification straight to your phone.

  • Smart Maintenance Reminders — Pila learns your fridge’s unique performance profile to catch issues early, helping you avoid surprises and costly repairs.

  • Smarter outlets let you schedule, monitor, and control power on every outlet. Works seamlessly with Alexa, Google Home, and Home Assistant.

  • Overload & Surge Protection — Built-in protection keeps your devices safe from power spikes and overloads—no need for extra surge protectors or power strips.

  • Charge from Solar Power to automatically prioritize using the free solar energy you produce at home.

  • Ultra-fast Device Charging — Four powerful USB-C ports (60-100W) quickly charge your devices, with independent power monitoring for each port.

Discover what makes Pila different.

No Solar

Limited solar re-charging options

Smart Solar

 Connect plug-in solar panels or your rooftop solar system

Automatic

One-time setup for automatic, seamless backup

Manual

Cumbersome setup and refueling for every outage

Smart Year-Round

Monitor, control, and optimize your home energy

Mostly Collects Dust

No monitoring, no energy control, not part of your smart home

Blends In

Made for indoor spaces, whisper-quiet, no cords to trip over

Loud, Inconvenient

Noisy, outdoor use only, 
requires extension cords

Expandable

Add more Pila batteries & power up new rooms in seconds

Limited Backup

Powers just a few home devices

Tax Credit Eligible

30% tax credit with 2 or more Pila batteries

No Tax Credit

Not eligible

Add extra backup protection & appliance monitoring — Pila works with the big backup batteries in your garage and whole-home generators.

By creating universal, smart batteries that work in any home—and allowing users to connect them in a shared network—we can build the world’s largest decentralized battery system. This collective energy resilience strengthens the grid, reduces the impact of outages, and creates opportunities to lower utility bills for every home.


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coleashman

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Comments

  • By vessenes 2025-03-121:028 reply

    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.

    Good luck!

    • By Aurornis 2025-03-122:187 reply

      > 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 way it's being compared to a Powerwall, despite not being a comparable product.

      My problem with this post is that it's a "Show HN" from an account that registered 2 months ago. Their only activity is this post. It's pushing a product with misleading marketing comparisons (It's not comparable to a Powerwall) instead of similar products on the market. The poster is also making claims in this thread that contradict their own marketing on the website. Their website says it will run a fridge for 1.3 days, but one of their employees is in this thread making claims of 2-3 days in some places and 3-4 days in other places.

      The negativity is because this is a misleading marketing piece and a lot of people are getting tricked into thinking this is a new type of product.

      Some examples of competing products with better specs and lower prices:

      https://www.bluettipower.com/collections/power-stations

      https://us.ecoflow.com/collections/delta-series

      EDIT: This thread is being astroturfed. Someone affiliated with Pila is alternating between talking about developing Pila and pretending to ask questions about Pila. See this comment pretending to ask if it qualifies for the Investment Tax Credit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43339416 . It took me 10 seconds to find his LinkedIn page where he's clearly associated with Pila: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chadconway_pila-energy-is-8-o...

      EDIT 2: Here's another comment where 'chadconway' pretends to ask a question and 'coleashman' answers it: https://archive.is/ws9bp . Both accounts are associated with Pila. This is a clear attempt at astroturfing.

      • By petesergeant 2025-03-122:291 reply

        > 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.

        • By chadconway 2025-03-122:352 reply

          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.

          • By Aurornis 2025-03-122:39

            > 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.

          • By petesergeant 2025-03-123:09

            Conceptually, sure, but in practice: I can't run my aircon or heating off this; my stove, dishwasher, and washing machine are wired into special circuits so I can't plug them in; if I use this for what you're suggesting on my fridge, I lose all the UPS-functionality you're pushing so hard, because I am regularly discharging it.

      • By 1vuio0pswjnm7 2025-03-1218:38

        "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like."

        https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

        Interestingly, the guidelines only refer to "insinuations" not unequivical accusations supported by evidence.

        IMO, the later has value.

      • By ijidak 2025-03-124:491 reply

        > This is not a new product, though...Battery power inverters with AC and solar input are a popular class of products.

        Often "totally new product" == bad (or more accurately, "first mover" == bad)

        I think there is a misconception that totally new products make the money. But the second (or later) mover is often in a better position [1].

        Dropbox was not new. File sharing existed prior. AirBnB was not new. Vrbo existed prior. Ethereum was definitely not the first crypto.

        The iPod was not new. MP3 players were popular enough to be found at most electronics stores.

        My rule of thumb is I want competitors. I want a product category to have some existing popularity (so I know there is money to be made), but not universal.

        I think we're far from battery storage being universal in homes and world-wide.

        So, if someone can become the iPod or Dropbox of battery storage, that might be a $100+ billion company.

        I don't know if Pila is it. But the idea of a battery mesh, instead of the all-or-nothing powerwall sounds interesting.

        I would love to be able to build up my home battery storage 1-kwh at a time instead of financing a giant battery all at once.

        I can especially see that having value in middle-income countries.

        Edit: Adjusted my 10-kwh statement to 1-kwh to make the example make more sense.

        [1]: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/the_second_...

        • By azinman2 2025-03-125:141 reply

          I really like this concept. Except I don’t know where / how to integrate it.

          My kitchen is already built with a fridge integrated into cabinets. There’s no place to put the battery. And even if there were, it would be a $1k machine dedicated to the fridge. That somewhat makes sense in that food can spoil, and we still want to be able to use the fridge, but I wish more could be powered.

          The next obvious thing is lights in the home. But this doesn’t allow me to do that outside of lamps; chandeliers and overheads do not apply.

          I’d love this to power the garage door opener, but right now there’s power that goes to it on the ceiling. It’d be really difficult to find a way to mount this to also include the opener without being super janky or needing an electrician to totally rewire that circuit. At that point the price has gone considerably up.

          I guess the last bit would be internet / networking gear, although I could get a cheaper UPS for that. I’m also not entirely certain I’d even have internet to connect to if the power was out given I have fiber.

          If I were remodeling the house that feels like the right time to add such a thing.

          • By kelseydh 2025-03-125:27

            If you are going as far as a remodeling, just get a powerwall added to the entire house's electricity supply and you avoid confusion/hassle at the outlet level.

      • By bradknowles 2025-03-1215:05

        It's a UPS. Compare it against APC SmartUPS and CyberPower.

        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.

      • By bitwize 2025-03-122:391 reply

        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.

        • By Aurornis 2025-03-122:401 reply

          > 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.

          • By arresin 2025-03-1219:051 reply

            This is crab in a bucket mentality.

            • By parl_match 2025-03-1920:07

              it's absolutely correct though

              this product added nothing, brought nothing new.

      • By childintime 2025-03-127:14

        Tangential here.

        Here we are, rightfully thrashing a product because of disinformation, while we have a president product doing this on a global scale. Not a peep. It's always the little guy (with the exception of Google at HN) who get gets the flack when they do something wrong.

        Misdirection is the most powerful political weapon, and we currently have a criminal making sure only he can wield it, with a fan base that loves the exercise of power, loves to see destruction, all in the name of (power to) Christianity. Christianity was losing so it got on board with a loser. No more "by faith" and "Jesus is the Lord". Now they cheer on the hole the USA is digging for others, only to fall in it themselves. Then "Elon" can save it and establish himself as the emperor of the world. The USA is just a pawn being played right now.

        All this while we get upset with a small competitor and by the same rules we can't put our eyes on the big players. Dang, because we can only talk about tech. Well, dang, just make a section where we can go to make X-rated, tangential, comments. Because we sure don't want to go to X.

    • By sharemywin 2025-03-121:392 reply

      I personally remember sh*tting on doordash...what a stupid idea.

      • By m463 2025-03-122:02

        The zune will do everything the ipod does at the same price.

      • By Aurornis 2025-03-122:321 reply

        But this product isn't actually a new concept. Competing products have been out for years with better specs and prices, even.

        • By chadconway 2025-03-122:362 reply

          Which ones?

          • By thyristan 2025-03-128:231 reply

            A bog-standard Uninterruptible Power Supply. Available from multiple manufacturers (big names are e.g. Eaton, Schneider/APC, but there are lots of choices) in all sizes from "powers your desk light" to "powers your whole house/datacenter/emergency room".

            Maybe there is value in marketing such a product to ordinary people that are not in IT or electrical engineering. Maybe you can improve on existing control interfaces and design. But don't be surprised when an established UPS vendor copies your product and crushes you with better numbers because of size.

            • By m463 2025-03-1220:06

              I think this space needs some disruption. Most UPSs are dreadful. Cheap, lead-acid and unreliable. And the power banks with attractive specs that seem to be built around 100ah lifep04 batteries... they don't seem to work as UPSs. (and they're expensive)

    • By oefrha 2025-03-123:081 reply

      Do I have to point to 1000 failed Show/Launch HNs with negativity? This kind of cliched meta commentary whenever a Show/Launch is criticized on HN is getting really old.

      • By vessenes 2025-03-127:501 reply

        I’d be interested in 2 or 3 successful show HNs that had positivity, actually, if you want to go searching. I’m not aware of any, and it would be useful to be able to better understand what high volume commenters on HN are good at assessing as far as product goes.

        Most (vocal) participants on HN that comment on product launches have almost no understanding of what will make a successful product / company.

        I’ll put my money where my mouth is - check my comments on the ethereum launch thread.

        • By oefrha 2025-03-128:02

          Search for top Show HN threads within a month and click on each one: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...

          Most of them are overall positive, a few are overwhelmingly positive (it's true even when you exclude silly fun ones and focus on actual products); "had positivity" is such a low bar, it's absurd you're "not aware of any". Even this one has your comment at the top, apparently that doesn't even count as "had positivity" to you.

          Moreover, even if 100% of Show HNs get 100% negative commentary, there's still zero logic in the statement "judging by the negativity here you're going to be a massive success".

          Edit: Okay you said "successful" Show HNs. Then we'll have to argue about what's successful, and I can't be bothered. But you can go to the all time results instead and I certainly spot a few what I would consider success stories.

    • By nikodunk 2025-03-121:101 reply

      Thanks so much! We'll address as much feedback as we can of course, but I hear you :D

      • By empressplay 2025-03-121:111 reply

        How many watts max output? Couldn't see it on the site. Thanks!

        • By nikodunk 2025-03-121:211 reply

          It's 2.4kW continuous, 7.8kW surge (ie to start up a sump pump, etc).

          Thanks for considering!

          • By empressplay 2025-03-121:41

            So not to be mean, but EcoFlow's website for a similar (slightly higher capacity) product has much lower times for how long it can power. For example, it claims 14h for a refrigerator (you're claiming 32) and 97h for a router, while you're claiming 132 hours.

            Now they might be conservative and you could maybe advertise a bit more liberal times but if you're competition claims their (almost identical) product has substantially lower times people might question that. Obviously EcoFlow is your real competition here and people are going to go check them out.

            So by all means claim somewhat better times ;) but maybe not as much as you are.

            Don't get me wrong though, you have a cool product and there's definitely room in that space for more options!

            https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-2-max-portable-power-s...

    • By downrightmike 2025-03-123:001 reply

      Those others couldn't burn down your house based on a faulty code push. Also, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. If that improves, it seems simple

      • By jve 2025-03-125:12

        I was quite amazed to learn that creditcard debt is such a plague in US... I mean you (not the one I'm replying to) are using money you don't own and hoping you will not only own it tomorrow but pay back the debt?

        Don't buy things you cannot afford and won't have to live paycheck to paycheck.

    • By supermatt 2025-03-127:09

      What does “coordinated” mean to you? It’s not distributing power it’s just reporting on usage.

    • By chadconway 2025-03-124:14

      This is my favorite comment!

  • By crazygringo 2025-03-1123:4412 reply

    It 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?

    • By nikodunk 2025-03-1123:528 reply

      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 your home.

      A pull-sting generator (gas) is great - and a push-button one is around 1K also btw- but it doesn’t go on automatically if you’re out, and be noisy, can only be started after the hurricane, etc

      Finally, local-first is super important to us for outage or otherwise - we integrate with Home Assistant and have public MQTT topics you can directly hook into no matter what happens to Pila the company, as long as your hardware lasts (predicted 10 years).

      Idk - that’s where we feel like the position and gap in this market is? But we may be wrong :)

      • By WillAdams 2025-03-121:331 reply

        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 your devices able to provide sine wave power to run small electric tool motors? Folks with CNC machines might be interested, or perhaps they could run tools on jobsites? How many small tool batteries could be charged from one? Would it fit in a Systainer? Might make a nice fit for folks w/ Festools.

        • By kelnos 2025-03-124:112 reply

          > 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 outlet and a plug in the middle, but for most people that would mean hiring an electrician.

          • By WillAdams 2025-03-1215:14

            Or, perhaps they could work up a package where the battery gets sold with a well pump by a house builder/well driller/plumber doing the pump install?

          • By WillAdams 2025-03-1210:50

            After one lengthy power outage and no running water to flush a toilet, most homeowners would consider that a worthwhile investment.

      • By bigtimesink 2025-03-120:022 reply

        > Great points - however this can keep your fridge running for 2-3 days (a pretty long outage).

        $1,000 buys a lot of groceries. It's cheaper to to have a small supply of shelf stable food for outages.

        > It can also do arbitrage and charge when it’s cheap and deploy the power when it’s expensive.

        This has the same problem. It takes a long time to make back the $1000.

        • By nikodunk 2025-03-120:291 reply

          Definitely! It’s primarily backup, and secondarily an arbitrage device :)

          The average fridge loss is estimated at $300 per outage, and the average fridge outage insurance claim is $600 I just learned today from an insurance agent at SXSW at our booth (apparently a lot of lobster is bought the day of the outage :P).

          • By lucb1e 2025-03-121:582 reply

            > The average fridge loss is estimated at $300 per outage

            Holy crap, I don't think our fridge fits 300 dollars' worth of food. We have trouble fitting a ~140€ grocery run into the fridge and probably at least half of that is non-refrigerated products. Hard to say how many days' food this is, probably close to a week, so a 36h+ outage (where the fridge actually got warm for a while) would have an average occupancy of much less than the initial 140€, maybe 60 or so? Idk. Not that I remember ever having a power outage longer than 8 hours in my life, neither the Netherlands nor Germany nor Belgium nor Finland (the countries I lived in)

            Either Americans and their fridges are built different or this risk (chance & impact) is way overblown

            Does this perhaps include opportunity cost where you can't work because you need to get new groceries? Generously, let's say you spend an hour in the store and an hour planning, going, and unpacking, so you'd be valuing those 2h at a consultancy rate of some 100$/hour

            • By sgerenser 2025-03-122:51

              American fridges are generally much bigger than European ones. Mine is something like 27 cubic feet, which I understand is around double the size of an average European fridge.

              I don’t think I’ve ever lost power for long enough that I lost anything in the fridge though, but there are parts of the country with a much less reliable grid (usually due to severe storms or other natural disasters).

            • By dzhiurgis 2025-03-124:471 reply

              It's pretty simple - europeans are more frequently going to shop. US/AU/NZ drive and do a bigger shop to last half a week or so.

              Also most of Europeans live in apartments - your power cables are underground. In suburbs, putting cables are underground is too expensive and overhead wires are easily damaged during storms.

              • By lucb1e 2025-03-132:33

                Yeah I'll never understand the people that go to the store daily or bidaily to see what's for dinner tonight, that seems like a big waste of time with increased exposure to whatever flu is currently popular. On the other hand, the planning involved in "where will I be, what will I be doing five days from now, will the potatoes have sprouted and the tomatoes be mouldy again by then" is also not fun, but yeah half a week (3-4 days) is the minimum of how often I ideally go

                Anyway I was keeping in mind (I mentioned) that one might store a week's worth of food, but now that I consider it again, also in the context of apartments vs. bigger buildings: I don't have a big family that lives with me (no children or parents or so, just partner), so I should perhaps multiply this by two extra persons. It still doesn't add up to more than half of the 300USD figure, but it's less outlandish if the 'average' household is considered to be 4 people who all eat adult-sized portions (as teenagers probably already would)

        • By bagels 2025-03-123:051 reply

          I lost $1000 in groceries in the Bay Area in 2023. Four multi-day outages on the peninsula.

          • By vladgur 2025-03-125:321 reply

            I’m on the Peninsula. Don’t remember an outage longer than few hours in my lifetime.

            • By bagels 2025-03-1318:25

              You're lucky. Really varies by where you live. Santa cruz mountains get the worst of it, but other parts like where I am are pretty bad too.

      • By Aurornis 2025-03-120:021 reply

        > Great points - however this can keep your fridge running for 2-3 days (a pretty long outage).

        Your own marketing page claims 32 hours (a little over 1 day).

        It's the very first icon in the table.

        EDIT: And your other comment now says 3-4 days for a fridge ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43338397 ). Getting hard to believe all of these different numbers.

        • By nikodunk 2025-03-120:221 reply

          TLDR depends on the efficiency of the fridge. You’re right of course though - I edited linked comment to be more conservative at 2-3 days also. I can get my personal lab fridge to last 5 days though (110W power draw, once every hour for 5 minutes). :P

          If your outage is longer than expected, the battery will recharge in a little over an hour and be ready to go again (if the grid comes on for a bit, or from your generator, a neighbor's etc).

          • By o11c 2025-03-122:15

            Hmm ... "Stores power from your generator" might be a market with room here since generators are often inefficient (and produce weird power) and batteries have grown a lot lately. OTOH, in practice home generators are more limited by "how often do we need to (and given the state of the infrastructure, can we) go buy a new can of gas" than efficiency. And even if efficiency does matter, how long will it take to pay off?

            Practical problems we had the one time we actually needed our generator were:

            * (remember to turn off the main breaker)

            * whoops, we blew the GFCI when we tried to back-feed power through an external outlet, so we had to run an extension cord through a door (with all that implies). This is the only thing that actually took us by surprise and took some debugging in the weeks following.

            * the 120V generator only one half of the split phase, so every other circuit in the breaker box doesn't work. Pick your half carefully!

            * the generator is strong enough to run normal appliances, but not the well pump (note: we had a completely different plan for heating). Here I suppose a battery could've been useful ... but then, the reason we didn't just buy a bigger generator in the first place was cost (for an extended-outage event that only happens once in multiple decades; for anything shorter you can just ... not open the fridge).

            * (just a note that with the increasing electrification of cars, some variant of "plug your house into your car" is likely to become more of a thing)

            While I've seen the grid flicker, this has only ever happened just at the start or just before it comes on permanently, so I'm not sure how useful it is to consider the "comes on for a bit" case either.

      • By longos 2025-03-121:331 reply

        The portability of the unit also makes a great use case for off-grid, getaway or usage in a remote location, or perhaps just as an additional option for existing setups.

        Being able to plug it into a NA standard plug into a more capable generator (or other outlet) to recharge is useful.

        Without knowing the price point... van life folks have solar batteries and the published power specs seem to be competitive and useful for powering higher-draw appliances and devices.

        The payback period to make arbitrage useful would be very specific to the user and how much electricity costs in their locale, but this calculation should take into account the delivery costs component of a utility bill that can be the same or higher than the cost of the actual electricity.

        • By chadconway 2025-03-122:30

          Price is $999 for people who pay $99 for pre-order. Normal price is $1299

      • By selykg 2025-03-1123:574 reply

        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.

        • By Aurornis 2025-03-120:02

          > My sump pumps are literally one of my biggest home ownership worries.

          There are a lot of sump pump backup solutions on the market at around half the price of this unit.

          There are also a lot of similar lithium battery + solar devices at less than half the price: https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-2-portable-power-stati...

        • By zdragnar 2025-03-120:57

          My dad put together a backup system- in spring time, they get weeks of water running at their house, so he's got two pumps on two separate batteries in case either pump or battery dies.

          You can even get an all in one system for around $200 if you want to save up for something more robust:

          https://www.homedepot.com/p/Basement-Watchdog-Emergency-Batt...

        • By koolba 2025-03-122:42

          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!

        • By nikodunk 2025-03-120:04

          We can start a Sump Pump with the 7,800W startup power (2,400W running).

          I’d recommend DIY if you don’t want/need/can’t afford an integrated solution. I built my own with parts off Amazon but it doesn’t take a bit of knowledge and research. Fun project though.

          This is definitely aimed at the other 99% that’s not gonna wire this up themselves though, of course :)

      • By beezle 2025-03-123:05

        I struggle with the math on how this is running your typical fridge for even 16 hours

      • By jonah 2025-03-121:41

        Are the batteries COTS units? In 10 years when they fail, can I get new ones from Grainger or Amazon or wherever and replace them?

      • By delfinom 2025-03-1123:573 reply

        Bullshit on the fridge. A modern day french door uses almost 2 kWh per day at the mid range model level (which really isn't that different from older top freezers). Higher end fridges use even more. The 1.6 kWh capacity isn't enough for 2-3 days.

        • By 22c 2025-03-121:171 reply

          Sadly, a modern day french door is pretty inefficient. Consumers prefer them because of their looks but they are very far from being an efficient way to keep food cold.

          • By kelnos 2025-03-124:171 reply

            Why are they any less efficient than a single-door fridge? Losses in between the two doors? I don't see why it should be much different. Both types of fridge causes the cold air to "fall out" when you open the door(s).

            A top-loading chest fridge/freezer is of course most efficient, but don't think many people have those in their kitchens.

            • By 22c 2025-03-203:31

              French door has less insulation because there's more "seams". Also typical french doors tend to have an ice machine or water dispenser, which is even less insulation and/or more seams.

        • By chadconway 2025-03-121:052 reply

          > 2kWh per day.

          That’s a lot of energy! What fridge do you have?

        • By danila22 2025-03-120:55

          Wow that’s crazy! What fridge is that?

    • By lancewiggs 2025-03-120:091 reply

      The market exists - I have a product from another company - Bluetti - (1).

      The Pila is a beautiful device, but that beauty comes at a price - it's a lot more expensive than, say, Bluetti's range of portable power stations and others too. They are also expandable, connect to solar panels and so on, and apparently the German market has embraced batteries like this with solar panels to give your home a degree of independence very easily.

      (1) https://www.bluettipower.com/collections/power-stations

      • By Aurornis 2025-03-122:221 reply

        The DELTA EcoFlow is another line of similar products: https://us.ecoflow.com/collections/delta-series

        These are everywhere. You can even pick them up at Costco, Best Buy, and other retail electronics distributors. They're a lot cheaper than the linked product, too.

        I think people are getting misled by the Powerwall comparison. This isn't a powerwall competitor. It competes with all of the other battery power stations on the market, of which there are many.

        • By jszymborski 2025-03-122:50

          EcoFlow, as best as I can tell from chats with Ukranian folks, has become a generic term for such battery backups. They are very common given the load shedding.

    • By dharmab 2025-03-120:163 reply

      > it'll stay cold enough on its own for a day without power as long as you don't open it much.

      Food in an unpowered fridge will be unsafe within 4 hours: https://www.foodsafety.gov/food-safety-charts/food-safety-du...

      • By lucb1e 2025-03-122:08

        So when you have the pack of cheese on the table at 19°C for 45 minutes for perhaps a week before it's used up... you should drive to the hospital? Most of the continent does this as far as I know (having lived in and visited friends around northwestern Europe) and I have yet to hear someone tell a horror story of getting food poisoned after leaving the cheese/salami at room temperature for a cumulative 2 hours

        This is not realistic, this is perhaps an "absolutely 100% guaranteed still safe for your baby while it is sick" value, which I guess makes sense for a government agency but they could communicate whom this advice is for

        Edit: scrolling further down the table, also cooked pasta, rice, potatoes, vegetables, and sauce should be discarded. These products cooked, so they cooled down through optimal breeding temperatures while you had dinner for an hour, before they even started their journey from room down to fridge temperature. They should be discarded according to this table and never consumed in the first place (explicitly: don't even taste to see if it's still good). Not to mention what spoiled while it was on your plate

      • By barbazoo 2025-03-120:331 reply

        That’s much too conservative in opinion, at least around eggs, cheese and dairy.

        • By dharmab 2025-03-121:341 reply

          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.

          • By barbazoo 2025-03-1215:38

            After 2 hours above 4C? No way! This is just them being conservative so they don’t get sued.

            My fridge is set to 6C, I should have gotten sick long ago then.

      • By happyopossum 2025-03-120:301 reply

        > will be unsafe

        That is absolute BS - food is considered unsafe after the food itself spends 4 hours above 40*f, so the website you’re linking to assumes a fridge and everything in it immediately warms to 41+* upon losing power? Physics doesn’t work that way….

        • By dharmab 2025-03-121:291 reply

          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.

          • By happosai 2025-03-122:301 reply

            Sounds like your parents fridge was poorly insulated, and thus consumed way more electricity than a modern fridge needs to.

            • By dharmab 2025-03-122:40

              I tried to warn them about french doors...

    • By Gustomaximus 2025-03-122:031 reply

      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. A Powerwall (or similar) is a significant investment.

      This product covers people like me with occasional outages but it doesn't have the setup or out of home hassle, and its a more financially accessible solution than a Powerwall. I could def see people interested in this.

      • By gothroach 2025-03-122:091 reply

        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.

        • By danila22 2025-03-122:42

          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.

    • By kelnos 2025-03-124:083 reply

      I think it can charge when power is cheap (or off solar if you have it), and then power a device (like a fridge) when power is expensive, even if you aren't in the midst of a power outage. So it's a bit more than a UPS, and isn't just for handling outages.

      Regarding cost, looks like this is $1k for a 1.6kWh battery. The Powerwall 3 is $9874 (plus installation costs) for a 13.5kWh battery. So Plia costs $625/kWh, while Powerwall 3 will run you $731.41/kWh. So it does seem the Plia is price-competitive, assuming my paragraph above is correct. And Powerwall will cost you even more than that per kWh since Plia is a self-install, while Powerwall is not.

      Granted, there are cheaper options than Powerwall.

      Plia certainly has its downsides: if you want it to power everything in your home, you have to put one (or more) in each room and plug everything into it (that's 8 or 9 Plias per Powerwall-equivalent). Presumably a whole-home battery can charge faster than a Plia, since you're probably plugging it into a 15A outlet where it'll be pulling less than 1800W.

      • By ac29 2025-03-124:36

        > I think it can charge when power is cheap (or off solar if you have it), and then power a device (like a fridge) when power is expensive

        Yeah that is a cool feature, but at least where I live there is only a few cents / kwh difference between peak and non-peak, which means this 1.6kwh battery system would save at most a nickel a day (~$20/year).

      • By danila22 2025-03-1212:21

        Good points, I want to clarify that ~$9874 is just the price of one powerwall alone. Add in electricians, wiring, permits and you’re looking at an additional $10k in install costs. Pila’s whole point is that it’s a plug and play solution with no install costs.

      • By parl_match 2025-03-128:59

        powerwall load capacity is significantly higher. pila could never come close to the sort of load that pw3 can sustain

        meanwhile, i can find battery solutions that output 120v on aliexpress, for $700 for a 1.8kwh battery

        anyways this show hn post is clearly an ad for a not particularly novel product. sorry plia!

    • By toast0 2025-03-120:402 reply

      I agree that this doesn't seem useful for time of use arbitrage.

      I think it depends on what your electric outages look like. Short outages, a desktop ups probably makes sense. But if you regularly get 12-36 hour outages, this might be a reasonable product for you. Personally, I expect two nines of utility power, so something like this could possibly work (but I already have a 35kW propane fired standby generator)

      • By Izkata 2025-03-121:041 reply

        Yeah, this sounds perfect for the suburb I grew up in - a couple outages a year, but they only lasted about half a day.

        "Don't open the fridge so everything stays cold" is a lot more difficult with three teenagers.

        • By chadconway 2025-03-121:10

          Pila has temp sensors that can monitor fridge & freezer temp to give you piece of mind.

          So hard to keep the fridge closed & how do you know whether the food is still safe?

      • By danila22 2025-03-120:58

        Yeah I get that, this will last longer than a UPS. I’ve thrown away a few in the last couple years that broke. That’s the lead acid UPS vs. LFP chemistry at work.

    • By brianpan 2025-03-123:191 reply

      My recently installed Powerwall 3 will only power my home for a few hours. If I don't stop HVAC and car charging, I may be out of power before I even wake up in the morning.

      What I really want is my milk not to spoil (keep my family fed, not opening the fridge is defeating the purpose) and to charge devices if the outage will last more than half a day. Pila is WAY cheaper and more targeted.

      I considered buying a Jackery Explorer 1000 and pushing my refrigerator out to plug it in during and outage but that seemed ridiculous.

      https://www.jackery.com/products/explorer-1000-portable-powe...

      EDIT: Other people are mentioning arbitrage, which is also pointless for me. My Powerwall 3 will save me a few hundred dollars a year if I set it send power to the grid AND during that time I lose backup protection.

      • By parl_match 2025-03-129:07

        if your concern is keeping your family fed, consider the last time you had an extended outage. then run the numbers

        if it was recent, such as living in certain parts of texas, you should be keeping large amounts of stable water for each person for at least a week (gallon jugs + water filter pens), fuel/burner/pot, rice/beans/etc in a water sealed emergency kit

        if it was a long time ago, you should be keeping enough water, vitamins, and high density calorie bricks for 96 hours

        it'd be nice to have fresh food, but it's way more practical and reliable to have sustenance stored in a closet somewhere

        for a family of four, premade emergency kits for 7 days will run you about $150, and youll need about 25 gallons of water - <$25

        $175 or a $1000 battery + $25 for water. idk choice is easy

    • By hakfoo 2025-03-122:18

      A use case I can see is for people who are dependent on things like insulin or other temperature sensitive medications. If you have to get out a dose every few hours or even every day or two, you might not be able to rely on thermal mass, and if you have a month's prescription or more on hand, it could cost thousands to replace if it perishes during the power outage.

      You could probably run a dorm-style mini-fridge for a lot longer than a 25-cubic-foot side-by-side, and it would be perfect for that case.

      Hell, buy the guts of a $79 dorm fridge, bolt the Pila product inside the chassis, and sell it as a "medical supply" for 10 times its cost-of-goods.

    • By CyberDildonics 2025-03-122:05

      If you can put a backup battery into an outlet and have it work well like an appliance there is a lot of utility there. Pumps and fans for gas hvac systems as well as sump pumps are more critical and less power hungry than a fridge. I would much rather have a web page on wifi to monitor it than another blu tooth app, but whatever.

      That being said 1.6 kw/h for $1000 is WAY overpriced. Lithium Iron Phosphate battery prices are dropping like a stone. This should be a third of the price and eventually that's exactly what someone will sell it for.

    • By Suppafly 2025-03-124:51

      >It looks beautiful. But I honestly don't understand what the market is.

      People who are willing to buy several individual UPS devices for appliances but aren't willing to pay an electrician to install a grid cut off switch so they can power their whole house with a slightly bigger UPS.

      Honestly, I could see someone buying one or two of these for their fridge and another for their home office or similar, but they are competing with existing companies that sell a similar product without the UPS feature, like you see nearly every youtuber advertise.

    • By chadconway 2025-03-1123:482 reply

      Backup can be extended to 62 hours through an expansion pack. A foldable solar array can be plugged in as well to extend backup indefinitely for long outages.

      • By viraptor 2025-03-123:51

        Indefinitely? The device has 2.4kW output and allows plugging in 1.2kW of solar which will work for a part of the day. That's not how "extend indefinitely" works.

      • By parl_match 2025-03-129:09

        "foldable solar array" lmao how much do you think those generate. please, respond before you look it up

    • By jodoherty 2025-03-1123:472 reply

      I might get this for my basement sump pump in case the power goes out during a storm.

      • By nikodunk 2025-03-1123:57

        This can start up a Sump Pump with a 7.8kW surge (2.4kw running output)

      • By quesera 2025-03-1123:501 reply

        A suitable UPS for that application costs less than $100.

        • By jodoherty 2025-03-120:174 reply

          Do you have any examples? I haven't seen what you're describing despite shopping UPSes, but something less than $100 that could last 10+ hours would be amazing.

          My $200 1500VA/1000W CyperPower UPS could handle a short one or two hour storm, but storms can last for 10+ hours here during the wet season. One long power outage could cost me a lot more than $1000 in basement damages (my basement is finished).

          A comparable all-in-one product to this pila battery would also be around $1000: https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-2-max-portable-power-s...

          You can easily cut that in half shopping for an inverter and battery separately:

          $240 for an inverter: https://www.homedepot.com/p/VEVOR-2500-Watt-3-4-HP-Sump-Pump...

          $200 for a battery: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Basement-Watchdog-Maintenance-Fr...

          But a lead acid battery might last 5 years where the pila battery is designed for 10+ years, so you're looking at $400 total on batteries. That quickly gets close to the $1000 for one pila battery.

          I want to believe $100 is all you need, but to me the math with the numbers that I've seen suggests $1000 is not unreasonable for something like this.

          • By Aurornis 2025-03-122:29

            > A comparable all-in-one product to this pila battery would also be around $1000

            That unit is more powerful, higher capacity, and has more solar features than the Pila product. The Pila is also $1300 after pre-orders are over.

            I'd pick the Delta unit, personally. They go on sale and you can even grab them from local places like Costco with good return policies.

          • By myth_drannon 2025-03-121:181 reply

            You buy lithium battery (lifepo4) not agm, much longer life time. I have exactly the same Vevor inverter + lithium battery total cost was 400$. But I regret doing this setup, I should have just gotten Ecoflow power station, it's a bit more expensive but more versatile.. You can take it with you anywhere

            • By jodoherty 2025-03-121:40

              Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like 100Ah LiFePo4 batteries are pretty easy to find too.

          • By quesera 2025-03-122:041 reply

            It depends on the wattage and duty cycle of your sump pump.

            My experience with sump pumps is low wattage and intermittent use. Sounds like this does not correspond to yours.

            • By jodoherty 2025-03-1223:45

              That makes sense. Mine runs every few minutes sometimes in heavy rain.

          • By chadconway 2025-03-121:23

            Exactly, traditional lead-acid UPS cannot power much for long and often last less than 3 years.

            Pila is great value.

  • By vasco 2025-03-1122:424 reply

    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.

    • By j-bos 2025-03-1123:422 reply

      It also means battery in Spanish.

      • By kragen 2025-03-121:191 reply

        That could actually be a bigger problem for the company, since it means that any competitor can label their competing product the merely descriptive term "Pila", and the company won't be able to register the trademark in the US, according to the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure §1209.03(g): https://www.bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1209_03_g.html

        > The foreign equivalent of a merely descriptive English word is no more registrable than the English word itself. "[A] word taken from a well-known foreign modern language, which is, itself, descriptive of a product, will be so considered when it is attempted to be registered as a trade-mark in the United States for the same product."

        Worse yet, it might happen that the USPTO does mistakenly approve the trademark, but then revokes it when it's challenged.

        Because Spanish is the second most spoken language in every US state, I'm pretty sure that in any city in the US there is a store where you can walk in today, ask for a "pila", and walk out with a battery. At least here in Argentina that's the term we normally use for single-cell batteries like a AA, while a car battery is a "batería".

        • By kortilla 2025-03-122:084 reply

          > I'm pretty sure that in any city in the US there is a store where you can walk in today, ask for a "pila", and walk out with a battery.

          Being 2nd most common language does not mean this, by a long shot. It definitely won’t work in most of the Seattle, Portland, Denver, Salt lake, Minneapolis, stores for example.

          • By lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2025-03-122:44

            I think you misread the pull quote. There is definitely a store in Salt Lake (er, “greater Salt Lake area”) that primarily serves the Spanish-speaking population. There’s actually a chain called Rancho Markets.

            (If you go to the deli section and say “costillas marinadas” to the right person, you will be given a bag of deliciously marinated short ribs.)

          • By kelnos 2025-03-123:56

            The GP said that in any city there is a store. Not that all or most stores will understand that request, but that there is at least one.

          • By kragen 2025-03-122:47

            ∃∧¬∀. You may want to review De Morgan's laws.

          • By ellisv 2025-03-122:17

            If you’re in Minneapolis I could recommend a few stores where that’d work.

      • By nikodunk 2025-03-1123:471 reply

        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 :)

    • By dzhiurgis 2025-03-124:44

      I always thought it's karailius (karalius means king in Lithuanian)

    • By luis_cho 2025-03-1122:581 reply

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

    • By nikodunk 2025-03-1123:44

      Big Pila Energy?

      lol not the same in Brazilian, but interesting :)

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