| Work Detail |
The Pila Energy home battery is a portable backup battery that stores enough energy to power a refrigerator for three days. Pila Energy unveiled the first plug-and-play home battery at SXSW 2025 to provide automatic backup power throughout the home. Pila Energy claims its Mesh Home Battery provides integrated, seamless backup power for both renters and homeowners. The plug-and-play battery automatically powers appliances and rooms during power outages, without the need to rewire the home or use extension cords. Unlike gas generators, Pila Energy claims the battery is quiet, maintenance-free, and works indoors. The battery has a modular design and can be installed next to the appliances you want to back up. Pila founder Cole Ashman, a former Tesla and SPAN engineer, grew up in New Orleans and remembers entire neighborhoods going dark for days during Hurricane Katrina. Twenty years later, Ashman says hes dedicated his career to helping people build energy resilience at home, and he focused Pilas mission on avoiding what he witnessed during Hurricane Katrina. The devastation was unimaginable, Ashman states in the companys mission statement: Thousands of discarded refrigerators piled up at curbs across the city. In Pilas mission statement, the company calls the discarded refrigerators left behind by Katrina a stark symbol of the nations fragile electrical system. Today, power outages are even more frequent as our aging grid struggles to keep up with the increasing intensity of natural disasters, says Ashman. Pila aims to change that: to bring smart, secure peace of mind within reach of every home and apartment. Each battery stores 1.6 kWh. With Pilas expansion pack, users can connect up to 1,200 W of solar power and store 3.2 kWh, which is typically enough to power a refrigerator, charge phones, and run laptops for a day or two. According to Pila Energy, the batterys smart mesh technology can seamlessly connect multiple batteries throughout the home, coordinate them to store solar energy, and optimize the stored energy for outage protection. The battery can be recharged during a power outage if connected to a plug-in solar panel. Similar to Wi-Fi mesh systems, Pila explains that modular batteries can work together in the background to optimize a homes energy consumption. Although the battery cannot provide as much power as a traditional generator system, its cost is much lower (starting at $999), allowing users to have selective backup power without a relatively high initial cost. Thanks to its Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular connections, Pila Energy claims the battery app provides real-time information on home energy usage, 24/7 monitoring of household appliances, and power outage alerts when the user is away from home. Pila Energy has received seed funding from Refactor Capital, Climate Capital, Jetstream, Looking Glass, and R7 Partners. The full set of specifications for the Mesh Home Battery are available on Pilas website. |
