Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

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> Judging by the negativity here you're going to be a massive success -- search up the dropbox, airbnb, coinbase and ethereum launch threads

This is not a new product, though. Battery power inverters with AC and solar input are a popular class of products.

You can buy similar products with higher capacity and better solar input at Costco or Best Buy.

I think people are confused by the "Show HN" tag and the misleading way it's being compared to a Powerwall, despite not being a comparable product.

My problem with this post is that it's a "Show HN" from an account that registered 2 months ago. Their only activity is this post. It's pushing a product with misleading marketing comparisons (It's not comparable to a Powerwall) instead of similar products on the market. The poster is also making claims in this thread that contradict their own marketing on the website. Their website says it will run a fridge for 1.3 days, but one of their employees is in this thread making claims of 2-3 days in some places and 3-4 days in other places.

The negativity is because this is a misleading marketing piece and a lot of people are getting tricked into thinking this is a new type of product.

Some examples of competing products with better specs and lower prices:

https://www.bluettipower.com/collections/power-stations

https://us.ecoflow.com/collections/delta-series

EDIT: This thread is being astroturfed. Someone affiliated with Pila is alternating between talking about developing Pila and pretending to ask questions about Pila. See this comment pretending to ask if it qualifies for the Investment Tax Credit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43339416 . It took me 10 seconds to find his LinkedIn page where he's clearly associated with Pila: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chadconway_pila-energy-is-8-o...

EDIT 2: Here's another comment where 'chadconway' pretends to ask a question and 'coleashman' answers it: https://archive.is/ws9bp . Both accounts are associated with Pila. This is a clear attempt at astroturfing.

> and the misleading way it's being compared to a Powerwall, despite not being a comparable product

100% this. I had to read a whole wall of text to get to "it's a really fancy UPS". Definitely places that will be useful, but I think a lot of people here are far more excited by the possibilities of products like Powerwall which move us towards a greener future than by large, stylish batteries.

Solar & wind are variable, we need more storage on the grid to charge when these sources are abundant and discharge when they aren’t. Pila offers the same greener future that Powerwall does & makes it so everyone (home owner, renter, condo, or apartment dweller) can be part of this greener future.

> Solar & wind are variable, we need more storage on the grid to charge when these sources are abundant and discharge when they aren’t. Pila offers the same greener future that Powerwall does & makes it so everyone (home owner, renter, condo, or apartment dweller) can be part of this greener future.

This account's first comments started 4 days ago on another Pila thread. It says "This is awesome! The end of power outages for all of us!"

I'm going to guess this is another Pila employee.

Conceptually, sure, but in practice: I can't run my aircon or heating off this; my stove, dishwasher, and washing machine are wired into special circuits so I can't plug them in; if I use this for what you're suggesting on my fridge, I lose all the UPS-functionality you're pushing so hard, because I am regularly discharging it.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Interestingly, the guidelines only refer to "insinuations" not unequivical accusations supported by evidence.

IMO, the later has value.

> This is not a new product, though...Battery power inverters with AC and solar input are a popular class of products.

Often "totally new product" == bad (or more accurately, "first mover" == bad)

I think there is a misconception that totally new products make the money. But the second (or later) mover is often in a better position [1].

Dropbox was not new. File sharing existed prior. AirBnB was not new. Vrbo existed prior. Ethereum was definitely not the first crypto.

The iPod was not new. MP3 players were popular enough to be found at most electronics stores.

My rule of thumb is I want competitors. I want a product category to have some existing popularity (so I know there is money to be made), but not universal.

I think we're far from battery storage being universal in homes and world-wide.

So, if someone can become the iPod or Dropbox of battery storage, that might be a $100+ billion company.

I don't know if Pila is it. But the idea of a battery mesh, instead of the all-or-nothing powerwall sounds interesting.

I would love to be able to build up my home battery storage 1-kwh at a time instead of financing a giant battery all at once.

I can especially see that having value in middle-income countries.

Edit: Adjusted my 10-kwh statement to 1-kwh to make the example make more sense.

[1]: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/the_second_...

I really like this concept. Except I don’t know where / how to integrate it.

My kitchen is already built with a fridge integrated into cabinets. There’s no place to put the battery. And even if there were, it would be a $1k machine dedicated to the fridge. That somewhat makes sense in that food can spoil, and we still want to be able to use the fridge, but I wish more could be powered.

The next obvious thing is lights in the home. But this doesn’t allow me to do that outside of lamps; chandeliers and overheads do not apply.

I’d love this to power the garage door opener, but right now there’s power that goes to it on the ceiling. It’d be really difficult to find a way to mount this to also include the opener without being super janky or needing an electrician to totally rewire that circuit. At that point the price has gone considerably up.

I guess the last bit would be internet / networking gear, although I could get a cheaper UPS for that. I’m also not entirely certain I’d even have internet to connect to if the power was out given I have fiber.

If I were remodeling the house that feels like the right time to add such a thing.

If you are going as far as a remodeling, just get a powerwall added to the entire house's electricity supply and you avoid confusion/hassle at the outlet level.

It's a UPS. Compare it against APC SmartUPS and CyberPower.

I've already got multiple APC SmartUPSes in the house. They don't need to be networked together. And they've got multiple output sockets, not just two.

At 2.4kW max output, and 1.6kWh storage, you can't even run this thing at full power for an hour. I can do better with both APC and CyberPower.

And APC has slimline models that use lithium technology to come in around the same physical size, albeit at a higher price point.

It's pretty. It's networked, albeit via a proprietary wireless protocol. But I've never needed either of those things for any of my "point defense" UPSes.

I really don't think there's anything here that is worth spending any time or effort on.

Entering an existing market with nothing new but a sleek, Apple-like UI that makes it eady for the average user has proven to be a business success again and again. And it's had detractors who turned out to be wrong ever since "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." If not before.

> Entering an existing market with nothing new but a sleek, Apple-like UI that makes it eady for the average user has proven to be a business success again and again

The competing products also have apps with good UIs.

This is a marketing play. It appears to be working, given how many people are convinced it's a new idea.

This is crab in a bucket mentality.

it's absolutely correct though

this product added nothing, brought nothing new.

Tangential here.

Here we are, rightfully thrashing a product because of disinformation, while we have a president product doing this on a global scale. Not a peep. It's always the little guy (with the exception of Google at HN) who get gets the flack when they do something wrong.

Misdirection is the most powerful political weapon, and we currently have a criminal making sure only he can wield it, with a fan base that loves the exercise of power, loves to see destruction, all in the name of (power to) Christianity. Christianity was losing so it got on board with a loser. No more "by faith" and "Jesus is the Lord". Now they cheer on the hole the USA is digging for others, only to fall in it themselves. Then "Elon" can save it and establish himself as the emperor of the world. The USA is just a pawn being played right now.

All this while we get upset with a small competitor and by the same rules we can't put our eyes on the big players. Dang, because we can only talk about tech. Well, dang, just make a section where we can go to make X-rated, tangential, comments. Because we sure don't want to go to X.

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