The first plug-and-play, in-home battery for delivering automatic backup power throughout the home was unveiled at SXSW 2025 by Pila Energy.
Pila Energy said its Mesh Home Battery provides seamless, integrated backup power for both renters and homeowners. The plug-and-play backup battery automatically powers home appliances and rooms during power outages without requiring the home to be rewired or extension cords to be used. Unlike gas generators, Pila Energy said the battery is silent, maintenance-free and works indoors.
Pila’s founder Cole Ashman, a former Tesla and SPAN engineer, grew up in New Orleans and recalls how entire neighborhoods sat in darkness for days when Hurricane Katrina hit.
“The devastation was unimaginable,” Ashman says in the company’s mission statement, “But one image burned into my memory above all: Thousands of discarded refrigerators piled on curbs across the city.” In Pila’s mission, the company calls the discarded refrigerators that resulted from Katrina a “stark symbol of the nation’s fragile power system.”
Twenty years later, Ashman’s says he’s dedicated his career to helping individuals build energy resiliency at home, and centered Pila’s mission around preventing what he witnessed during Hurricane Katrina.
“Today, outages are even more frequent as our aging grid struggles to keep up with the increasing intensity of natural disasters,” Ashman says. “Pila aims to change that—to put smart, safe peace of mind within reach for every home and apartment.”
(See also: When disaster strikes & The grid’s new secret weapon: Your home)
Each battery stores 1.6 kWh. With Pila’s expansion pack, users can plug in up to 1,200 W of solar and store 3.2 kWh, which is typically enough to power a fridge, charge phones and run laptops for a day or two. According to Pila Energy, the battery’s smart mesh technology can seamlessly connect multiple batteries throughout the home, coordinate them to store solar power and optimize the stored energy for outage protection.
Pila’s battery has a modular design and can be installed beside the appliances intended to be backed up.
The battery can recharge during an outage if it is paired with a plug-in solar panel. Similar to Wi-Fi mesh systems, Pila said the modular batteries can work together in the background to optimize the home’s energy use.
Though the battery cannot provide as much power as a traditional generator system, the battery is a fraction of the cost — starting at $999 — enabling users to provide selective backup power without a relatively high upfront cost.
With onboard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular connections, Pila Energy said the battery’s app provides real-time insights into home energy use, 24/7 appliance monitoring and alerts to power outages for when the user is away from home.
Pila Energy received early-stage funding from Refactor Capital, Climate Capital, Jetstream, Looking Glass, and R7 Partners.
The Mesh Home Battery’s complete set of specs are available on Pila’s website.
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