I’d love for something like this to be great, but the economics just don’t make any sense. This is a 1.6kwh battery for $999. You’ll never save what it cost to buy the unit before the battery is worn out. It’d be hard to save more than $1-$2 per day.
Is there any reason this won't eventually be commoditized?
The retail cost (low end) for lifepo4 batteries is $125/kWh, and for hybrid inverters it's $175/KW, thanks to decades of Wright's Law.
Currently Pila is $625/kWh, but what is stopping it (or clones) from being $200-400/kWh eventually? Their high prices are probably temporary artefacts of (1) lack of current scale, (2) premium due to UI/brand/lack of competition. But markets will catch up.
If the price does drop to that level then it's a big deal because you don't have to pay labor installation costs, which is a large proportion of total costs for end consumers.
The main question I'd have at that point is about electrical and fire safety relative to the standard setup.
Energy arbitrage value depends a lot on your utility, agreed. For most home battery systems it's a 5-7 year payback, even with solar. In my experience most folks investing in these systems are also putting a lot of value on the backup power, and from the data/insights. The average fridge in the US has $300-500 of groceries inside, and some insurance providers offer as much as $600 per outage to pay for spoiled food. So for folks contending with frequent outages, we're excited to offer more peace of mind value while delivering some additional smart energy management value on top
