An enormous house backup battery prices 1000’s of {dollars} — and 1000’s extra to put in. A brand new entrant within the area seeks to carry a smart-home strategy with out requiring the upfront electrical work of equally high-tech batteries.
Pila Energy, based by former engineers for house battery chief Tesla and good electrical panel producer SPAN, unveiled its Pila Mesh Home Battery at South by Southwest 2025.
More than simply field stuffed with cells, the Pila Energy battery is crafted to mix in properly with your own home’s decor — becoming seamlessly in your TV stand or on high of your fridge.
What the Pila house battery has to supply
The battery is designed to be put in subsequent to the home equipment you plan to again up, akin to your fridge, TV and pc. Each battery can retailer 1.6kWh, with an expandable backup unit that may take it to three.2kWh of electrical energy.
Pila Energy’s founders stated the objective was to offer a lower-cost, simpler method to again up key house home equipment whereas additionally providing smart-home-style insights.
“It’s 2025, there are higher methods to get individuals energy that do not require plugging in extension cords within the rain and beginning up pull-start turbines and that additionally need not break the financial institution and value you $30,000,” founder Cole Ashman advised me at SXSW.
Pila Energy stated the batteries will likely be obtainable beginning at $999 by way of early entry reservations. The batteries are anticipated to ship by the tip of the 12 months and include a five-year guarantee. While one battery will not qualify for the 30% federal tax credit score, two or extra would — as a result of the whole capability would exceed the credit score’s 3kWh minimal.
No electrician wanted
Like the BioLite batteries I noticed at CES 2025, the Pila Energy batteries are supposed for house backup however do not truly wire into your own home’s electrical system. That saves cash on set up — these are primarily plug-and-play — however that additionally means they do not feed energy again to the grid the way in which a standard house battery system does.
Chad Conway, a strategic adviser to Pila Energy, stated householders who merely need to again up just a few issues can get a dependable backup system with out paying tens of 1000’s of {dollars} to put in a house battery. “Apartment-dwellers too — everyone wants an answer. Across completely different earnings brackets, everyone wants one thing, and that is actually the everyone battery,” he stated.
Pila Energy’s battery can match into slender areas, akin to atop a fridge.
Customers can begin with one battery and add extra to broaden their backup capability, both linking a number of batteries collectively to offer longer-term energy for one equipment, akin to a fridge or spreading them all through the house to again up a number of home equipment.
A conveyable photo voltaic panel can recharge batteries even throughout an outage. The commonplace unit can recharge from a 100-watt moveable photo voltaic panel. The further backup unit, which will increase the capability to three.2kWh, can cost from much more photo voltaic, as much as 1,200 watts.
These batteries perform primarily as moveable energy stations. Each battery consists of 4 commonplace AC energy retailers and three USB-C ports. They include five-year warranties, and Pila Energy says they need to final 10 years.
Smart battery storage
Pila Energy touted its software program, which may join and coordinate a number of batteries right into a mesh system to retailer energy and optimize it for outage safety and extra. Pila compares it to a mesh Wi-Fi system, the place a number of modular batteries work collectively to optimize power use.
“More,” on this case, typically means adjusting your power use to offset the upper prices of time-of-use power charges. If your electrical energy prices extra throughout some components of the day than throughout different components of the day, the battery can cost itself when energy is reasonable and run your home equipment off of saved power when it is costly.
The batteries embody customizable shows, with options like clocks and graphics displaying their power output.
Beyond offering backup energy to the fridge, the battery may also help guarantee your fridge is working correctly. With a Bluetooth-connected temperature sensor, it might regulate how chilly the fridge is, letting you understand if it’s essential to think about upkeep or a alternative, or simply should you left the door open.
The battery is constructed to work with different good house ecosystems, akin to Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home — though you may also use Pila Energy’s app. “Of course, we’ve got a cloud (infrastructure), and we’ve got an app, and we carry plenty of worth, we predict, however we’re not forcing individuals to make use of it,” Ashman stated.
Correction, March 10: This story initially had an incorrect title for Chad Conway. He is a strategic adviser to Pila Energy.
