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From your site: "For homes with electricity prices that vary throughout the day, Pila optimizes charging to help manage your utility bills." Based on experimen

From your site: "For homes with electricity prices that vary throughout the day, Pila optimizes charging to help manage your utility bills." Based on experiments like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtNq-0kV8YM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtNq-0kV8YM, I'm extremely skeptical. Can you back this claim? Also, why are people going to spend $1,300 on this when a good UPS is a fraction of the price, and (for example) an Anker SOLIX F3800 Plus is $3,200?

chadconway 2y ago
A UPS can usually only power 100W, not enough for most fridges. Pila can do 2.2kW, enough for fridge, microwave, internet, and coffee maker.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  Absolutely true, yes. I mentioned UPSs to represent the low-end of the UPS/power station/generator spectrum, with the Anker SOLIX F3800 Plus at the higher-end (which costs only 2.6 Pikas). The video I linked to does a solid job of evaluating the pointlessness of using a more comparable $500 1.8kW Anker SOLIX C1000 for the same use case Pika is pushing, which is what prompted my skepticism.
  - chadconway 2y ago
    2 Pilas ir a Pila & a battery expansion offers 3.2kWhs which is enough to qualify for ITC which is a 30% discount.
- cwillu 2y ago
  100W is a _very_ small UPS, I don't see any on the first page of the amazon listings that are that small.
jvanderbot 2y ago
I've used gas and portable "solar/battery" backup generators and UPS systems. The win for me is the form factor. It can slot right next to any appliance or utility room shelf. The cost is not bad by comparison to portable battery systems, but portable battery systems fall into two form factors: 1. Garage / basement stacks that have to connect to a generator hook-up: which itself costs kilo-dollars. And what if my garage / utility panel isn't heated? Extreme temp swings can degrade these I'd imagine. 2) carry or roll-away. Which is great for camping or pulling out of the closet during an outage, but that's not convenient and not what I'm looking for And finally, the UPS-like standby power beats both options as well. The solar generator types don't do passthrough power well (they warn against it) and the garage/basement stacks have to be connected to a cutover switch anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong nowadays but this product beats both those for these reasons.
Nextgrid 2y ago
That video's conclusion is misleading - he's only shifting his fridge's energy consumption. That's not actually much in the grand scheme of things - it's a well-insulated box that is already a thermal battery. In fact, he only discharged his power bank to 64% at the end of the day, so he didn't even use up his full capacity (that he paid for and is factored in his spreadsheet). Batteries can provide significant savings but for that you need to actually use them fully, either by load-shifting significant loads (if you have enough to fully consume the battery capacity), or just charging/discharging the battery directly into the grid (essentially acting like a grid storage system - charging the battery to full when energy is the cheapest, and dumping it back when it's the most profitable). Even better when you have solar - instead of selling that energy at low feed-in prices, save it in batteries and use it once the sun goes down so (if you have enough battery capacity) you never ever need to actually "buy" any energy from the grid. I believe the Pila can technically do the above, although its battery capacity is probably too small to ever recoup its purchase price on this type of arbitrage. However, the underlying concept is absolutely workable and profitable with the right equipment.
- chadconway 2y ago
  100% Pila can charge from your home solar or cheap electricity and discharge when power is expensive.
- CharlesW 2y ago
  > I believe the Pila can technically do the above, although its battery capacity is probably too small to ever recoup its purchase price on this type of arbitrage. That's my point, thank you for putting it so succinctly. The front page opens showing the Pila being used for a refrigerator — presumably doing load shifting, given the front page marketing copy I quoted — so I think asking for data showing that this is a legitimate use case is fair.
  - nikodunk 2y ago
    It definitely does load shifting and utility rate arbitrage (and solar power charging) as a side benefit, but it’s not built to be an arbitrage machine. Its primary use case is backup, for now.
rtkwe 2y ago
That conclusion all depends on how much extra power the UPS uses while acting as a pass-through. I think the SOLIX doesn't directly pass through the power so it's having the inefficiencies of conversion to and from AC-DC-AC, maybe this version has a more efficient pass-through system?
- chadconway 2y ago
  Correct, this does direct feed-through no conversion losses for pass through because it uses a relay rather than an inverter to connect to the grid.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    What's the draw of all your software to serve the app etc? That might still might drive it to be net negative for your energy costs depending on how much higher the peak rate is than your base rate.
cantrecallmypwd 2y ago
I bought lights-out manageable 400 lbs (lots of kWh) of rack mounted sealed lead acid batteries in the form of UPSes with expansions for less than $600. The other thing is that rewiring a main panel for generator and/or solar to provide emergency power to a subset of circuits is preferred to simply trying to power everything with a tiny battery pack. This usually means adding a subpanel and an automatic transfer switch, which is a heck of a lot simpler than running extension cords through the house and much more fine-grained than powering everything with backfeed.

chadconway 2y ago

A UPS can usually only power 100W, not enough for most fridges. Pila can do 2.2kW, enough for fridge, microwave, internet, and coffee maker.

CharlesW 2y ago
Absolutely true, yes. I mentioned UPSs to represent the low-end of the UPS/power station/generator spectrum, with the Anker SOLIX F3800 Plus at the higher-end (which costs only 2.6 Pikas). The video I linked to does a solid job of evaluating the pointlessness of using a more comparable $500 1.8kW Anker SOLIX C1000 for the same use case Pika is pushing, which is what prompted my skepticism.
- chadconway 2y ago
  2 Pilas ir a Pila & a battery expansion offers 3.2kWhs which is enough to qualify for ITC which is a 30% discount.
cwillu 2y ago
100W is a _very_ small UPS, I don't see any on the first page of the amazon listings that are that small.

jvanderbot 2y ago

I've used gas and portable "solar/battery" backup generators and UPS systems. The win for me is the form factor. It can slot right next to any appliance or utility room shelf. The cost is not bad by comparison to portable battery systems, but portable battery systems fall into two form factors: 1. Garage / basement stacks that have to connect to a generator hook-up: which itself costs kilo-dollars. And what if my garage / utility panel isn't heated? Extreme temp swings can degrade these I'd imagine. 2) carry or roll-away. Which is great for camping or pulling out of the closet during an outage, but that's not convenient and not what I'm looking for And finally, the UPS-like standby power beats both options as well. The solar generator types don't do passthrough power well (they warn against it) and the garage/basement stacks have to be connected to a cutover switch anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong nowadays but this product beats both those for these reasons.

Nextgrid 2y ago

That video's conclusion is misleading - he's only shifting his fridge's energy consumption. That's not actually much in the grand scheme of things - it's a well-insulated box that is already a thermal battery. In fact, he only discharged his power bank to 64% at the end of the day, so he didn't even use up his full capacity (that he paid for and is factored in his spreadsheet). Batteries can provide significant savings but for that you need to actually use them fully, either by load-shifting significant loads (if you have enough to fully consume the battery capacity), or just charging/discharging the battery directly into the grid (essentially acting like a grid storage system - charging the battery to full when energy is the cheapest, and dumping it back when it's the most profitable). Even better when you have solar - instead of selling that energy at low feed-in prices, save it in batteries and use it once the sun goes down so (if you have enough battery capacity) you never ever need to actually "buy" any energy from the grid. I believe the Pila can technically do the above, although its battery capacity is probably too small to ever recoup its purchase price on this type of arbitrage. However, the underlying concept is absolutely workable and profitable with the right equipment.

chadconway 2y ago
100% Pila can charge from your home solar or cheap electricity and discharge when power is expensive.
CharlesW 2y ago
> I believe the Pila can technically do the above, although its battery capacity is probably too small to ever recoup its purchase price on this type of arbitrage. That's my point, thank you for putting it so succinctly. The front page opens showing the Pila being used for a refrigerator — presumably doing load shifting, given the front page marketing copy I quoted — so I think asking for data showing that this is a legitimate use case is fair.
- nikodunk 2y ago
  It definitely does load shifting and utility rate arbitrage (and solar power charging) as a side benefit, but it’s not built to be an arbitrage machine. Its primary use case is backup, for now.

rtkwe 2y ago

That conclusion all depends on how much extra power the UPS uses while acting as a pass-through. I think the SOLIX doesn't directly pass through the power so it's having the inefficiencies of conversion to and from AC-DC-AC, maybe this version has a more efficient pass-through system?

chadconway 2y ago
Correct, this does direct feed-through no conversion losses for pass through because it uses a relay rather than an inverter to connect to the grid.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  What's the draw of all your software to serve the app etc? That might still might drive it to be net negative for your energy costs depending on how much higher the peak rate is than your base rate.

cantrecallmypwd 2y ago

I bought lights-out manageable 400 lbs (lots of kWh) of rack mounted sealed lead acid batteries in the form of UPSes with expansions for less than $600. The other thing is that rewiring a main panel for generator and/or solar to provide emergency power to a subset of circuits is preferred to simply trying to power everything with a tiny battery pack. This usually means adding a subpanel and an automatic transfer switch, which is a heck of a lot simpler than running extension cords through the house and much more fine-grained than powering everything with backfeed.