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Comment by shafyy | Hacker News Reader

This looks great!

> When an outage happens, the onboard inverter detects the power loss within 20ms and automatically disconnects from the grid (islanding)

How does this work? Do I need to install anything additional in my grid? Like, how does the fridge "know" that it should now draw power from Pila?

Sorry for my noob questions :D

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This is essentially a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) with an app. The UPS basically passes power from the wall to your fridge until there's a power outage. At that point it flips to using the battery to send power to your fridge.

But with the added benefit that it charges during the day on solar and then powers device during the night.

My one question would be: does it work with home assistant? It would be great to integrate in te energy dashboard.

>But with the added benefit that it charges during the day on solar and then powers device during the night.

As an important caveat on solar: if I'm reading correctly, it appears that the main unit only has support for a small amount of solar input directly connected to it (100 W, which makes me suspect it may be using USB PD for input), while larger amounts need the expansion pack, or a separately installed system.

Can also monitor and charge from standard roof top solar when on-grid.

Yes re: Home Assistant. We're stoked to have folks integrate with their own energy dashboards if that's what they prefer to do.

Pila plugs into a normal wall outlet. The fridge plugs into the outlet on the back of Pila. Pila detects an outage in 20ms and automatically begins backing up the appliances that are plugged into it.

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