September 15, 2025 • 52 mins
What happens when the lights go out? For most of us, it’s just an inconvenience. But for millions of households and small businesses, outages mean life-saving medicine spoils, work grinds to a halt, and daily life becomes uncertain.
This week on Things Have Changed, we’re joined by Cole Ashman, founder of Pila Energy, who is on a mission to make backup power accessible to everyone.
From growing up in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina to working on cutting-edge energy products, Cole has seen firsthand how fragile the grid can be — and how urgently we need solutions that work for all people, not just homeowners with deep pockets.
With Pila, Cole and his team are building portable, modular, and intelligent batteries that can protect what matters most — whether that’s a fridge, a CPAP machine, or your home office.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why today’s grid challenges (aging infrastructure, AI-driven demand, climate disasters) make resilience more urgent than ever
- The problem with traditional backup power and who gets left behind
- How distributed, plug-and-play batteries can scale faster than big infrastructure projects
- Why resilience should be a right, not a privilege
🎧 If you care about technology, climate, or the future of energy, this conversation will change the way you think about power — and what it means to stay resilient.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
The light flick fragile Thegetting older outages are
getting worse and the demandfrom s.
Ai en data center is explodingenergy resilience es no longer a
Cole Ashman (00:22):
we're living in this bizarre time where there
have been more billion dollarweather disasters in the last
three years than there were inthe entire two thousands in the
entire Katrina decade combined.
question led cole ash rethinkingwhat back.
Not massive Twenty thousanddollars systems for homeowners
(00:45):
but something different portablemodular Intelligent batteries
that meet people they
We think that we need solutions that are both as
smart as a Powerwall likebattery, but as affordable as
some of these smaller batterypacks.
Climate s aing ai the resiliencebecome a right not just a
(01:10):
privilege.
Jed Tabernero (01:48):
just about two weeks ago, my mom came and
visited me here in Jersey Cityand when she was unpacking her
stuff, she told me that she hada couple of medicines that she
needs to put somewhere and shesaid, Hey, it needs to stay
cold.
This is a treatment that shegets on a weekly basis.
It's quite important for her.
And I thought, okay, let me justclear some space out of the
(02:10):
fridge this.
Kind of experience I had with mymother just thinking about where
to put her medicine, somethingso critical to her that's gonna
be in the fridge.
I started thinking to myself,what happens if we lose power?
What happens then?
What happens to her medicine?
And we would think about ablackout.
These kind of cases where welive as something that's
(02:33):
annoying.
We're outta power for a while.
Maybe we lose internet.
But for some people, like mymom.
This stuff can be actuallypretty critical, right?
It can be critical for us tocontinue to have power to keep
her medications cold, and I'msure she's not the only one.
There's probably millions ofpeople that rely on very
important things that all youneed to do is refrigerate.
(02:54):
It could be a ccp, a P machine,it could be insulin.
It could be really importantstuff.
And so that's where today'sguest comes in.
Cole Ashman is the co-founder ofPila, a startup that's
re-imagining what home energystorage looks like.
Portable, affordable, modular,and smart.
It's not about powering yourwhole house, it's protecting
what matters most when thelights go out.
(03:18):
Kohl's helped build, portions ofthe Tesla Powerwall.
He worked on span smartelectrical panels.
We're really excited to have himhere today.
Cole, welcome to Things HaveChanged, podcast.
Cole Ashman (03:29):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited for theconversation.
Jed Tabernero (03:33):
Great.
I just talked about a quoteunquote fridge moment for
myself.
What was your kind of fridgemoment?
What was that thing that reallystuck out to you that made you
wanna solve this specificproblem?
Cole Ashman (03:47):
It's funny you say fridge moment because for most
of us, like that's the thing,that's the biggest worry when
power goes out, and my, my, mystory in the power space has
been very resilient, focused mywhole career.
And I've always looked back to,my growing up in New Orleans.
I lived through HurricaneKatrina, which is 20 years ago
(04:08):
now, but one of the standoutvisuals post storm were
hundreds, thousands, tens ofthousands of refrigerators
discarded on the street, curbsin front of people's houses,
because, this was an extremeevent.
Whether they were flooded orwhether people had just left for
weeks on end and, the meat hadspoiled and whatever.
This is like kind of this noturning back point when, you
(04:31):
know, you're, you're not gonnascrub your fridge out and it's
easier just to toss it.
And, they sat for weeks andweeks.
So that's an image that's burnedin, in my mind and.
I was fortunate in my career towork on products at Tesla, like
their home battery, thePowerwall, and talked to lots
and lots of customers hangingout in their garage while the
installer was putting it in andjust asking like, Hey, why,, why
(04:51):
are you spending$20,000?
What was your motivation?
And they all had their fridgemoments too, so it's these.
These handful of reallyimportant things in our lives,
in our homes, whether it's,internet, you work from home
fridge, you're a new parent, andyou've got milk in the freezer,
or insulin, like you mentioned,a water pump, right?
That means you literally can'tturn your tap on if power goes
(05:11):
out.
There's several kind of reallyimportant loads and it's often
one or two of those thatmotivate people to do the big
upgrade and get a generator or abattery system that can be tens
of thousands of dollars.
Quite literally it was, it was afridge moment.
And the story of Pila, whichwe'll get into was just about
meeting people with productsthat kind of fit their budget
(05:33):
and their needs and moving awayfrom this big, complicated
multi-month upgrade that onlyhomeowners are really able to do
with permitting and the rest.
Just something that's more akinto modern products.
Mesh wifi nodes and Sonossystems and the rest that we're
all familiar with that are plugand play and can scale up over
time and, can come with you whenyou move.
(05:54):
We just thought there was anopportunity to do that for power
resilience, energy security, anda host of other things that
we'll get into.
Shikher Bhandary (06:01):
Thanks for that.
Cole.
uh, So Jed and I lived inCalifornia previously.
I live in Texas.
He lives in Jersey.
All these three states.
See rolling blackouts almostevery year.
Either it's due to drought,either it's due to wildfires,
flooding with a lot of climateinduced events.
You're seeing the grid beingaffected and it just seems like
(06:23):
this is gonna keep happening.
Right.
In terms of planned andunplanned outages in the US and
I'm not even talking aboutglobally because there was this
whole.
Weekend where Spain lost all ofits energy, all of Spain.
Yeah.
So this has happened more often.
The requirements of AI is justgonna go vertical if it already
(06:47):
hasn't.
So yeah, it just seems like thisis such a great space to kind of
dial in, because backup powerisn't really a thing in the US
for a renter or even ahomeowner.
Cole Ashman (07:01):
That's right.
Like by the numbers, the, it's12% of homes have a, a fossil
backup generator.
That's by and large, like thedefault solution.
Which, it's the last centuriestech.
It's noisy.
There's a lot of reasons that itworks and there's other reasons
why it doesn't work.
Like having to rely on a gasstation to refuel when the gas
station also often can't pumpgas when power goes out, versus
(07:23):
batteries which can recharge forfree from the sun while you go
clear your yard or, or whateverit is.
There's kind of three, threemajor trends that we look at in
this space that, that are, nosecret, right?
The first one is we have an oldgrid in the US we built the very
first power grid, to Americaninnovation at work, right?
But now that means we've gotthis really out, out of date
(07:45):
power grid and out of datebusiness models in some cases
for how to update it and out ofdate ways of thinking about
upgrading it versus other placesin the world.
We see that as opportunity.
The second one is load growth,right?
So we're not in a business asusual mode where we're just
hunkering down and trying tooperate the grid as we have for
the last several decades.
(08:06):
We've got EVs we've got AI anddata centers coming on with
increased velocity, trying toconnect to the.
We're some have forecasted adoubling of load growth in the
next few decades, which isastronomical.
And of course, that has to bemet with more generation.
So the whole system's changing.
And then the third one, whichyou alluded to is weather.
(08:27):
You know, like we're living inthis bizarre time where e every
part of the country is nowgetting faced with weather
events, whether it's, dichos andwindstorms in the Midwest,
whether it's fires out inCalifornia.
Strengthening hurricanes in thesouth, winter storms in the
north, it's just, it'severywhere.
Right?
And again, by the numbers, therehave been more billion dollar
(08:50):
weather disasters in the lastthree years than there were in
the entire two thousands in theentire Katrina decade combined.
So, it's not, it's not goingaway anytime soon.
And all of these things togethercreate this perfect moment,
perfect time for bettersolutions that can be scaled
really quickly, that can meetpeople where their need is at.
(09:10):
And of course, that's what we'reall about.
Jed Tabernero (09:12):
Yeah.
No, that, that's interestingbecause it's, you just pointed
out the three things that makeit a perfect time to innovate in
this space, but some peoplewould say that folks have
already come up with certainsolutions.
Right.
And this is kind of where I wasreally interested because what
really I'm thinking about as a,as a key question when we're
(09:34):
talking about the problems ofsolving this space is who's
getting left behind?
Right.
Something that we really focusedon in this research and
something that I comparedaverage cost and, how do you
think about these people whoneed to solve this same problem,
who can't afford an entire,power wall, right?
Cole Ashman (09:54):
That's right.
Jed Tabernero (09:55):
If that's the first at least solution that
came to my mind.
That's very public.
Folks understand that there's abattery at home.
You know, they get a Tesla, theyget the solar panels and they
get a Powerwall at home allinstalled for you to be able to
afford just even the Powerwall,you mentioned it in the intro
portion, it's like 20 to 30bucks, 20, 30,000 bucks, right.
Cole Ashman (10:15):
I wish it was 20 to 30
Jed Tabernero (10:16):
yeah.
Would've been a lot easier.
But that's.
If you look at the average UShousehold income, right, that's
maybe it's, it's like 60 K,something like that, that could
represent anywhere from 20% to50% of most Americans' income,
right?
You know, back to the question Iwas asking earlier, who's
getting left behind?
(10:37):
Well, it's the folks that can'tactually afford the quote
unquote traditional.
Backup power, I guess we cancall that traditional now.
It's been around for a coupleyears, I guess.
Um, and that's where, I think itmakes so much sense to build
more solutions that to yourpoint, are more consumer
friendly and that can scale.
I think the Powerwall is scalingvery slowly.
(10:59):
Great piece of innovation, greatpiece of technology, but it's
scaling very slowly, right.
So, yeah.
Cole Ashman (11:05):
Well let, and let's talk about categories of
products, right?
Like you just had an outage, youwanna solve it.
You never want that to happenagain.
You wanna protect your family.
This is often how this likebuying journey starts for homes
and for businesses.
You mentioned Powerwall andPowerwall like products.
These are big batteries thatoften go in the garage or bolted
to the side of your housebecause it's a complicated
(11:27):
electrical upgrade.
You need professionals to do it.
Electricians, their time isexpensive and there's kind of a
complicated permitting processto do these kind of upgrades.
Just like any major, major homerenovation, that's where a lot
of that price tag comes from.
The hardware, the batteries, alldistrict costs have come down,
but the total install cost for aPowerwall like system has kind
(11:48):
of remained.
Steady over the years to thepoint where now let's say you
get a quote for$20,000 for, anentry level single Powerwall
system.
About$10,000 of that is softcost permitting, design, sales
overhead, all of the rest.
Um.
That's the premium solution, andit's, it's such an incredible
(12:08):
solution.
And if folks have a battery likethat, or maybe they know someone
who does, they, they know peoplerave about it because it really
does feel like living in, thiscentury, it's seamless.
You don't even know the lightsgo off.
It's connected.
So you can be anywhere in theworld and you just like really
feel in control.
It's, it's incredible, but it'shard to get right.
So then, you start looking at,okay, well maybe I want a lower
(12:30):
cost solution.
Generators, natural gas,gasoline, diesel have been
around forever.
They're kind of the, thestalwarts, the incumbents in
this space.
Obvious downsides there.
And then, you know, you look tothe.
Lower cost battery solutions.
There's now a proliferation.
You can go on Amazon and see,dozens and dozens of companies
that sell these kind of campingbatteries.
(12:51):
Which, you know, you run anextension cord, you click a
button.
There's not really like asoftware, smarts element to most
of these, but you, you know,they're more designed for the
job site or kind of camping andthey really look out of place in
your home.
The industrial design is likepower tool, right?
It does not feel like it shouldbe
Shikher Bhandary (13:08):
It looks like you're, you are able to like
drill holes and plug anythinginto like a five socket.
I know this because I'mliterally gonna need it for a
hiking trip this weekend.
Cole Ashman (13:19):
And, these are great because they're low cost,
they're durable but they don'treally do anything for you other
than backup power, and they'revery manual, right?
So it's kind of a clunkysolution.
At the end of the day, if you'retalking about running extension
cords, my grandmother's notgonna do that kind of thing.
Right.
The average person might buythat if it's the only option,
but, but we don't think it hasto be the only option.
(13:39):
We think that we need solutionsthat are both as smart as a
Powerwall like battery, but asaffordable as some of these
smaller battery packs.
And the way that you do that isjust building these systems with
that infrastructure grademindset.
A power wall, but miniaturizingthem.
And that's kind of exactly whatwe've done with Pila.
(13:59):
The first product that we'velaunched is a slim battery.
Think meant to tuck above yourrefrigerator under your desk
next to your sump pump in thegarage with the chest freezer.
Wherever power is most importantto you, rather than one big
system put in all at once by aprofessional.
It's a small distributed systemthat can be set up, on piece by
(14:20):
piece, room by room.
And that is how you cut out allof this expensive costs and also
how you bring in those peoplethat you mentioned who are left
behind the renters, the condoowners, the folks that just
don't have, you know, the, thebudget for a big system.
And that's a huge, huge section.
Of the population.
There's, 130 million householdsin the US in total.
(14:42):
41 million of them are condosand multifamily, 45 million
rent, so in total, that's abouthalf of American households that
even if they could afford aPowerwall, just can't get one
because Powerwall is, reallydesigned for the single family
home with the garage and,rooftop solar and the rest.
Shikher Bhandary (15:01):
One of the main advantages here is it not
being hardwired.
We can just kind of plug andplay.
That means the next time Texashas a freeze, I can connect my
Xbox directly to a pela.
Forget about the fridge.
Jed Tabernero (15:13):
thinking about.
Come on, man.
Cole Ashman (15:15):
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (15:16):
Yeah.
But yeah, Cole, you, you touchedupon briefly about the mesh
network.
Can we kind of, dive a bit intothe technology and what you
think sets it apart?
Cole Ashman (15:28):
Let's go one, one step deeper here.
So outages are often how peoplestart thinking about their home
energy.
The obvious other one, ofcourse, is their bill.
Right.
And we're also in a world wherepower prices are precipitously
rising.
One in six households are, arealready behind on their energy
bills Out here in Californiawhere, power prices are rising
(15:50):
incredibly fast.
The retail rates are up 50% inthe last five years.
The, the load growth and datacenters are driving this up even
faster, right?
So our view is just like with aPowerwall, backup power is one
key pillar of, of why you wantthat system.
And the other is that 24 7 valueof helping you manage your
(16:11):
bills, understand your energy,and kind of automate some of
that.
Unnecessary spend away, once youhave, if you have a battery
sitting in your house, don't youwant it doing something for you
99% of the time when you don'thave an outage?
And that's, that's a systemschallenge and a software
challenge at the end of the day.
So for us that's kind of core toour DNA, how do we turn this
(16:33):
battery set of batteries into adistributed energy management
system, into a brain that canactually uplevel your home save
you money on your bill and sortof support, support the grid and
create new revenue streams forbusinesses and, and homeowners
while doing that, you know, so,so how do you do it?
Right.
Well, with the Powerwall system,it's like hardwired into your
(16:56):
garage, you know, it's all, it'sall kind of connected in and
centralized.
You can think about it like it'skind of a crude analogy, but you
can think about it like gettinginternet, 20 years ago or 15
years ago.
You have to have someone comeout.
There's a big box.
They run a coax cable.
It's, in one place and thenyou're running, ethernet cables
through the wall to switchplates like that.
(17:16):
That's the status quo in powertoday.
But no one does that obviouslyin, in internet today, we all go
out and buy Google Mesh, wifiand Eero, and you kind of ex
build out the system based onyour need.
You know, you live in anapartment, maybe you need one,
you know you've got theMcMansion.
Outside of Dallas and you'vegot, 15 mesh points.
(17:36):
But the beauty of that is it'skind of customizable and people
can build it out as they need.
Another great analogy in thisspace that many people are
familiar with is audio.
Just like home audio used tomean speakers in the wall
professionally installed with,remember the volume knob
Shikher Bhandary (17:53):
Yeah.
You have to go in like fourdifferent corners and turn on
the Sabo, right?
Yeah.
Cole Ashman (17:59):
Yeah, and you've got this big amp in the closet
and three years later it's outof date, and it's like that
again.
That's kind of the status quo inpower, the power space.
Our, our view is let's modernizethe power space and create these
nodes, which are batteries andenergy measurement and energy
control and compute.
In one easy, beautiful packagethat you can distribute, you
(18:21):
know where, where it mattersmost, and this could be five
across your home, but thissystem is again, infrastructure
grade because there's also needin multi-tenant.
To serve hundreds and hundredsof different appliances across a
building and for businesses aswell.
That's kind of how we see thisevolving in the necessary next
step to make it more accessible.
(18:42):
You asked about the mesh, that'sjust the connectivity between
all of these devices and, wetalk about this is like IOT 1.0,
internet of Things.
That's like your smart fridgeand smart washing machine.
I've never met anyone who hasever used those features and I
think I've met.
More people that have just beenannoyed by the fact that it's
smart.
So we have to think about like,how do we avoid that?
(19:03):
What were the mistakes, thatproduct manufacturers have made
over the last decade in tryingto jam smarts where they weren't
useful?
And a lot of that problem isconnectivity.
You have to keep it connected toyour wifi when you change out
your router, like everythingdisconnects.
And we wanted to solve thatproblem from the outset.
And one way you can do that isby keeping all of your devices
(19:24):
connected kind of natively.
So we've developed and, kind ofpatented this really interesting
mesh communication network.
At the end of the day, that'sjust a way to get all of these
batteries across your homeworking together in concert, in
a way that doesn't requirecomplicated setup in a way that
allows you to add more overtime.
But, when those batteries areworking together, that's how you
(19:44):
save money on your bills, andthat's how you, give people more
insight into their home.
Shikher Bhandary (19:48):
When you say working together.
It means like, say if it'snighttime, usually prices are
lower at night than, say at 1:00PM Hottest between one to like
six right?
During summer.
So you are saying it would besmart in the way that say you
have one P system connected tothe fridge, one to your Xbox One
(20:10):
to your.
Cole Ashman (20:11):
Window Air condition unit, sump pump, you
name it.
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (20:14):
Yeah, so all of them would probably be smart
enough to kind of trigger intakefrom the grid at a lower price
point.
Cole Ashman (20:22):
That's right.
That, and that, that's a greatway to think about this.
Ultimately, it comes down towhen are the batteries pulling
power?
When are they shifting thatpower to the devices that are
connected to them?
And how are they sharinginsights about how all of these
devices and the help of yourhome wiring is kind of
performing.
So, you know, for many of us, wehave time of use rates, which
(20:43):
just means powered.
Prices vary throughout the day.
So these, this coordinatedsystem is aware of that and it
can respond to those pricesignals to reduce your use of
high cost electricity.
And then of course, if you havesolar or if you connect solar,
that's free energy that you'regenerating at home.
So using that to offset.
(21:03):
Your expensive grid.
Electricity is another great wayto do that.
There and the use cases kind ofextend beyond that.
This is gonna go a little bitinto the weeds, but just to give
you an example of how, fastsoftware is changing our
buildings take a commercialbuilding that's adding ev
charging, it may have never beendesigned for that high power
draw.
(21:24):
So if they want to add EVchargers, their options are one,
pay for.
Tens or hundreds of thousands ofdollars of upgrades to the wires
coming into the building so thatit can power all of the EV
charging and everything else.
Or option two, add what's oftencalled an energy management
system, an EMS or a powercontrol system, A PCS.
(21:45):
This industry is laden withthree letter acronyms.
So apologies for that.
But the other option, ratherthan doing the kind of big
hardware upgrade to the buildingis a software upgrade to the
building and what that lookslike.
Is awareness of what's going onin real time.
'cause usually our buildingsaren't pulling at full capacity.
Usually, there are loads likeair condition and refrigerators
(22:06):
and EV charging that come on andoff throughout the day.
And the classic way of designingfor that is well shoot if they
all come on at once.
We gotta make sure the wires canhandle it, but that creates a
lot of inefficiency in design.
IE extra headroom.
So just by moving these loadsaround when things are using
power, hey Ev, charger one justturned on.
(22:27):
We need to throttle down EVcharger two or ask the rooftop
air condition system to reducecooling slightly.
And it's like kind of thisbalancing act, that allows you
to use the existing wires in thebuilding.
And of course, that's just much,much cheaper than pulling new
wires into every commercialbuilding.
So you know, the battery'sworking together.
Another tool is this kind ofsoftware orchestration using
(22:51):
batteries to offset the HVACusage when ev charging turns on.
So, and, and anyway, I'll stopthere because, I can go on and
on about this'cause it'sincredibly exciting and we're
really at the cusp in theindustry with this.
But that's what batteriesworking together means.
That's what, our kind of novelmesh tech enables.
Jed Tabernero (23:10):
That helps.
I don't see that in any otherUPS solution today.
Cole Ashman (23:14):
Right, because they're all, lead acid and,
basically designed for one job,which is when backup power is
needed.
They beep incredibly loudly andusually.
Shikher Bhandary (23:23):
That's ingrained in my childhood, in my
core memory, the beeping.
Cole Ashman (23:29):
Yeah, so the idea, the concept of backup power is
obviously not something that'snew, but this idea of can you
take that device and have it doa dozen other useful things for
you, you know that's the problemto be solved, which at the end
of the day means we just have todig up less materials out of the
ground and, make fewer batteriesbecause the batteries that we
have can do more for us.
Jed Tabernero (23:51):
You mentioned a little bit earlier about how
this can potentially relieve thegrid.
You see a future where a ton offolks have PA batteries at home
and all of a sudden our griddoesn't need to get
revolutionized.
I mean, I'm sure that's stillthe main goal is to maybe
modernize our old, really oldgrid systems, but this could be
(24:12):
a potential solu, get everybodya, a peel battery, you know what
I
Cole Ashman (24:15):
Absolutely.
I mean, that, that's whybatteries are the topic du jour
in the power industry.
So this thing that I justdescribed with like a commercial
building and loads needing to becontrolled, that exact same
thing is how the power gridoperates.
But instead of individual aircondition units, they think
about it as big generators and,solar plants and cities, you
(24:36):
know, and, and big industrialcustomers.
So traditionally we've built ourpower grid to a large degree for
some of these worst casescenarios.
You know, we, we have to buildsupply so that on the hottest
day of the year when everyone'srunning air condition and the
rest, you know, we have enoughcapacity.
That can create a lot of extraheadroom.
So, just like we were describingwith that building, you can
(24:56):
shift things around in time ormaybe kind of take them offline
by running them via batteriestemporarily.
That is a solution to you know,grid upgrade at the end of the
day.
And the same challenge exists.
How do you reliably.
Get all of these batteries to dowhat you want them to do when
you want them to do it fastenough.
And that that's kind of the corechallenge.
(25:18):
But relieving grid strain isabsolutely something that these
batteries can do.
This past month in Puerto Rico,you know, which has had tons and
tons of challenges with theirpower grid.
I mean, major island-wideoutages, going back to, you
know, 2015 with Hurricane Mariaand even this year there are a
lot of Tesla power walls inhomes in Puerto Rico.
And through this reallyinteresting thing called Virtual
(25:41):
Power Plants, VPPs, anotherthree letter acronym.
You can ask all of thosebatteries to kick in.
When there's not enough powerfrom the big power plants and
supplement them on those gridstrain kind of, moments.
And, you know, this is happeningright now.
This isn't kind of futuretheory.
And all of those households thathave power walls are, are
(26:03):
getting paid for thatperformance.
You know, this isn't just thisisn't just a feel good thing.
Like it's a real way to upgradeyour home and your business and
kind of help.
Ultimately like lower the costof owning that smart battery
backup system.
Jed Tabernero (26:18):
There's gonna be a lot of attention in how we.
Figure out how to not overloadthe grid, and this is just one
of the interesting ways to doit.
You mentioned that you werechatting with customers as well,
Coles, just to kind of figureout what people's problems were.
Do you have a most interestinguse case for somebody who needed
Pila?
Cole Ashman (26:37):
Well, we'll say the top ones, right?
So fridge is kind of this herouse case that we already talked
about.
And, and by the way,
Shikher Bhandary (26:43):
Bitcoin Mining.
Mining
Cole Ashman (26:45):
We have heard that, that, and
Shikher Bhandary (26:47):
what?
Cole Ashman (26:48):
Di different discussion, but you know, that
kind of load is actually greatfor grid participation because
it can scale up and down.
But different topic, you know.
So fridge is this reallyinteresting one and again, one
of the reasons why we thinkbattery is closer to the edge at
the appliance is interesting is'cause the data is more
interesting there.
We can tell you not only, oh,your whole home is powered, but
your refrigerator and freezerare at these exact temperatures
(27:11):
at this moment, and thereforeyour food is safe.
So having that relationship withthe appliance is another reason.
You know that this approach wethink is in some ways better
than the whole home expensivesystem, and certainly better
than the camping battery.
That's an extension cord pluggedinto the fridge and has no kind
of awareness, you know, no, noability to tell you more.
(27:32):
Peel is almost like an Applewatch for your fridge in, in
that case.
So that continues to be the onethat really, really drives kind
of adoption.
But there are fun other onestoo.
Like we've heard the salt water,fish tank folks, the reptile
aquariums, you know, and then,then some of like the, the more.
The more obvious ones likewindow air conditioning work
from home folks, you know, maybethey have their podcast set up.
(27:55):
You never know.
But it's really, really variesby household and, and by, by
geography.
And I think.
Because of that, it's soimportant to have a flexible
solution, and not say this isthe window air condition
battery, and this is the fridgebattery.
We have a, one, one size worksfor all of these loads,
approach.
Jed Tabernero (28:15):
Do folks qualify for the federal solar tax
credit?
When they get PI guess you, youprobably have to have more than
one unit to be able,'cause Ithink it's three kilowatt hours
is required.
Um,
Cole Ashman (28:27):
and there's there's a world of complexity and tax
credit.
Short answer is this year.
Folks qualify the OBVV Trump'sbill kind of put, put an end to
that benefit for federal taxcredits.
There are still, stateincentives and utility
incentives and the rest that aregonna continue to do a lot of
work in this space.
Jed Tabernero (28:47):
Gotcha.
Because that, that might besomething that also drives
folks.
One drives the price down, butjust incentivizes folks in
general to get going with thisstuff, so,
Cole Ashman (28:56):
absolutely.
And it's been, I mean, it's acomplicated topic.
You know, the 30% tax credit hasreally done a lot to lift this
industry.
It started with residentialrooftop solar.
Under the Inflation reductionAct, things like batteries and
electrical panel upgrades andthe rest we're kind of covered
more explicitly.
So it's unfortunate that it'sgoing away, but it's not a death
(29:17):
sentence for the industry.
Like this industry is one thatcan stand on its own two feet at
this point.
And like rooftop solar in the USis more expensive than most
places in the world.
You know, we're often above$4 awatt when places like Australia
and Germany are sub$2 per watt.
So you have certain folks, youknow, who are, sort of
expressing an opinion that thismight be a necessary reset for
(29:39):
the industry.
There's been a lot of kind ofpredatory sales tactics, and
it's kind of like the goldfishhas grown to the size of the
bowl where, you know, the costof solar hasn't, isn't
necessarily come down with that38% tax credit that's getting
passed on to the salespeople andthe lenders and the rest.
So, I'm optimistic about it andI know a lot of folks that, you
know, we work with and talk toin the solar and whole home
(30:01):
battery industry see a paththrough.
I, I think we willcounterintuitively see costs
come down as tri pricetransparency becomes you know, a
bit more business as usual inthis kind of industry.
Jed Tabernero (30:14):
In Europe, it's kind of been up and down with
credits as well.
I was just in Netherlands twoweeks ago and my father-in-law
has a strawberry farm.
They grow strawberries on glasshouses and the government is
offering a 50% tax credit.
To any farmers who put solarpanels on top of their glass
(30:36):
houses kind of insane, just paidfor itself.
But it was a huge project.
You had, millions of hectares,of glass houses, and these
policies change up and down, butit's just, that it, it's needed
for some places in order tomaintain the grid or just to
future proof yourself,
Cole Ashman (30:52):
absolutely.
And when it's there it's amazingupside, and it does help drive
adoption.
But our view is.
We don't wanna build productsthat depend on those kind of tax
credits.
And at the end of the day, themost important thing is what's
the upfront cost?
How can I get started with this?
And what we've heard from ourcustomers is, you know, the,
the, our entry price point is1299 versus a$20,000 Powerwall
(31:16):
system, or, you know, often moreexpensive for other brands.
And it's really that entry costthat is, you know, kind of the
core.
Dollars and cents number thatpeople think about.
And obviously 30% on a$20,000system's, different than 30% on,
a, on a much smaller system.
So, a lot of different ways toslice this, but again, continue
(31:36):
to be really optimistic that thelocal incentives and utility
incentives and state incentivesthey're, they're ramping up, you
know, despite what the currentfederal administration is is, is
doing on the federal tax creditside.
Shikher Bhandary (31:49):
Just the sheer demand of compute, of just
consumption across the boardwill just ensure that batteries
are always going to be neededand even more so going forward.
So the one one point there,Cole, you, you mentioned about
the Powerwall as well as thepillar, what appliances will
largely run on this?
We spoke about the fridge andall that stuff, but how long?
(32:12):
Would they run for?
Because I know we are talkingabout kilowatt r so I don't have
a number of how much a fridgeconsumes in a day.
In a week.
Cole Ashman (32:21):
And you, and no one should need to know that number
by the way.
But you know, like, so, so the,the short answer is average
fridge about 30 hours for ourkind of base device.
You can stack on a second oneand get to 60 for that extreme.
Case, but even better, you canplug in, a temporary solar panel
and kind of recharge it day today, to refuel even in the
multi-day outage.
(32:41):
For a window air conditioningunit that might be larger, using
more energy can be kind of 12 to15 hours.
But, these aren't numbers thatanyone needs to load into their
brain because we make it.
Very easy, your fridge, itsprofile.
We have this, relationship withthe device and we know what it
typically uses, how you use it,and both on a, very friendly
(33:01):
screen on the device.
There's an app if you want touse it.
We tell you exactly how muchbackup time you have left.
And if you plug in, more, thatwill adjust.
To help people ration thatenergy in the outage.
Because at the end of the day,like, kilowatt hours eyes gloss
over, and unfortunately that's,I think people in this industry
are so passionate about it thatthey, they love talking in these
(33:24):
terms, but you just lose theaverage person.
So, our approaches.
We're keeping your food safe.
Here's exactly how much backuptime you have.
If you want to see more, there'stons of other stats under the
hood, for most people, that'swhat it's all about.
Shikher Bhandary (33:37):
Yeah, that is such a good take on it because
so I may have some backgroundbecause I'm dealing with compute
and data centers.
So anyone says gigawatt,everyone's like, whoa, you know,
eyes roll back.
Right?
But what does that mean to aconsumer that literally just
needs their fridge running?
During a weather event, right?
(33:58):
Is it gonna be there for a day,two days, a few hours, just to
kind of get them through theevent?
Is it modular?
That is amazing.
I didn't realize that you couldstack up multiple pillars to
scale up.
It literally feels like, thecloud, you can just add more
servers and just kinda scaleout, which is amazing.
Cole Ashman (34:16):
Modular, flexible, right?
That's what every, every companyis talking about across hardware
and software.
And it's modular in two ways,right?
You can stack kind of at theroom level or the appliance
level, Hey, I want my fridgespecifically to run longer.
Or like we talked about with thekind of.
Mesh wifi node analogy, you cango room by room and spread them
across the house to alsoincrease kind of capacity for
(34:38):
that bill savings benefit.
Shikher Bhandary (34:41):
How's the reception been?
Clearly are getting a lot ofinterest and it feels like the
right time to be solving thisproblem.
How's that interest been?
I know y'all are, werefundraising, so how's that whole
process going?
Because again, we talk about it.
Jed and I are in the hardwarespace and it.
Expensive.
Right.
Hardware is, tends to beexpensive, but would love to get
(35:03):
your take on what, what are thevibes like in battery power,
resiliency world?
Cole Ashman (35:09):
Vibes are good.
Vibes are vibes are very good,is the short answer.
Um, we're, hey, we're, we'refortunate that, this is a very
real need in the market andthat's kind of been been
reflected in our ability to.
Bring on amazing people into theteam and, raise money and, get,
get orders for these units.
So we're working as fast as wecan to deliver them.
(35:29):
Later this year we launched outof stealth in March at South by
Southwest down in Austin.
Um, incredible reception there.
And, some of the conversationsthat.
I think resonated most with meand the team weren't with your
kind of typical tech enthusiast,early adopter, although like we
have some very cool featuresthere from the like home
assistant integrations and therest.
(35:51):
But it was with, Thegrandmother, grandfather, who
had never really even thoughtthat they could have a product
like this in their home.
It was from the, all, all walksof life from folks in, the
Midwest who had kind of maybeskewed more prepper style and
had their bunker next to theirhouse all the way to the,
downtown Austin resident.
Who was really interested in,the grid incentive program.
(36:12):
So I think we're finding thatthis idea of energy security and
energy resilience andself-sufficiency just kind of
hits on like.
Perhaps a very American kind ofcore identity.
And obviously that existselsewhere in the world, but
especially here in this country,people want to be
self-sufficient and I thinkwe're being tested now more than
(36:32):
ever with these outages andrising power bills.
And it just feels like one ofthese areas that you know is out
of control.
And then you say, oh, well wait,I can bring this back into
control.
That, that's amazing.
And hardware is hard.
No, no ifs, ands or buts aroundthat.
But fortunate to be working withan incredible team here who have
brought products to market atApple and Amazon.
(36:54):
And, a number of the team workedat Span on the smart electrical
panel with me.
Tesla Plus, our, our network offolks who have built products
across the industry.
Advising and, and thecoalescence of.
Brain power around this idea isreally, what's making it happen.
So feel incredibly fortunatethat the timing is right and
we've got the right folks tomake it happen.
Shikher Bhandary (37:16):
You mentioned both residential and commercial.
Are y'all thinking expandingoutside of just the residential
aspect?
Because the need is there,right?
Cole Ashman (37:26):
Absolutely.
I.
Jed Tabernero (37:27):
And not, not everybody has the bank account
or the wallet of Amazon to beputting generators and smart
machines in their buildings andstuff like that.
So I'm sure there's somecommercial use cases that you're
gonna find really interesting.
Cole Ashman (37:41):
Absolutely, and we're talking with, mom and pop
restaurant owners.
We're talking with small, mediumbusinesses and we're talking
with the big enterprisecustomers.
Look like traditionally energystorage for buildings has been
like rigidly sectioned intoresidential, commercial,
industrial, and there have beendifferent product classes for
each of those.
(38:01):
Powerwalls for residential.
Larger pad mount batteries forlight commercial.
And then like mega packcontainerized, 40 foot shipping,
container sized batteries forgrid scale and, and industrial.
In that kind of residentialcommercial space, we're finding
that we kind of have this newability to blur the lines
because.
This like mesh communicationnetwork and this distributed
(38:24):
modular design allows us toscale up again from like one in
your New York City kind of condoto hundreds of these across a
commercial property or across amulti-tenant building.
So absolutely both of thoseconversations and the ones that
have got me most excited aresome of these mom and pop.
Shop type owners because theseare folks who have never had the
(38:46):
right products for them, andjust have been left out.
And as we think about, impact,we want to make sure that, it's
not just the industrialcustomers and the commercial
customers at scale that areprotected, but also put the
power in the hands of thepeople, where, where one outage
could mean, significantfinancial strain for, a small
(39:07):
business, a restaurantespecially.
Shikher Bhandary (39:09):
Okay.
So this is amazing.
I mean, I guess this is thingshave changed exclusive.
So you have the PA, you have,different versions of that, and
then you have a giga pila, whichcan handle everything in a small
enterprise.
Cole Ashman (39:22):
And why has no one done this?
Right?
The challenge is getting all ofthese things to work together is
a really hard problem, and it'sone that, we feel kind of
uniquely able to put togethergiven our experience in this
space.
But in our grandest descriptionsof what we want to do, we talk
about upgrading the operatingsystem of our buildings.
We need a new OS for power andwhat's going to power that?
(39:44):
In the same way that you can'tlike run iOS 16 on a Nokia
phone, we kind of need betterhardware that enables the
software.
So our answer to the betterhardware is this distributed
plug and play compute plusenergy control and, and energy
storage.
That's the hardware that'srunning in this, this sort of
larger operating system acrossthese batteries.
(40:06):
And I think that's, that'swhat's most exciting to me as I
think forward to the next fiveand 10 years is.
Having smarter buildings thatare not only resilient when it
comes to power and kind ofmanaging their bill, but also
resilient from a compute, and abrain perspective.
What's going on with buildingall these data centers and the
way that we've kind ofarchitected our information
(40:27):
technology looks a lot like howwe built the grid, in the early
19 hundreds with big,centralized.
Big centralized systems, butinstead of a big generator, it's
a data center.
Well, what happens when thatconnection, fails, whether it's
something with your internetservice provider or whatever,
it's your building that's you'verelied on to be smart and take
care of you and the securitysystems and energy management.
(40:48):
Does that just become dumb?
We don't think it has to.
We think by putting, smartfocused kind of compute at the
right points, you can actuallyhave a.
Smart offline building as well.
And we think of that asresilience 2.0, power and
intelligence.
And of course that's not to saylike no data centers should get
built, but just like with thegrid coming at it from both ends
(41:11):
makes a lot of sense.
The big centralized system for,obvious reasons.
And then the local kind ofresilience, self-sufficiency
piece as well.
Shikher Bhandary (41:21):
Yeah, from reading your blog posts, and,
Jed and I are big believers ofabundance, energy abundance,
right?
We need to build nuclear powerplants and solar and battery and
literally just make sure that,we have access to power.
As AI compute kind of startsbecoming a sizable portion of
(41:43):
the consumption.
On the grid across the globe,right?
So just talking about scale,right?
These la these large AI labs areracing to build these multi
gigawatt scale dcs.
And to kind of put that intoperspective, right?
You know, our listener consumersout there might be thinking,
(42:05):
okay, what does that mean?
What does gigawatts even mean?
Right?
Training the latest AI model.
Can power the ci a city the sizeof Atlanta for the same time
period.
That's the scale that we aretalking about, right?
So GPD five.
Yeah.
GPD five is, will be likepowering Atlanta, right?
Or Seattle or one of these, bigcities, right?
(42:27):
So this is very, veryconsequential for the, for the
grid and everyone else, right?
For society because ultimatelywe tap into the par for our
livelihoods and our homes.
So this trend is not going Ithink, I'm close to the source,
but I was reading some articlesabout open AI's new cluster in
Texas is at peak will be ahundred gigawatts us.
(42:52):
Consumption.
Peak gig consumption is 700gigawatts.
So we are like getting close.
Now.
That training cluster is notgonna be at that scale all the
time, but even 10% of the entireconsumption of us, the us power
consumption is just.
Outta this world, like justridiculous.
Cole Ashman (43:14):
right?
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (43:15):
And we are talking about 12 months.
We've gone like in 14 months.
Our, the scales have just 10 xlike this.
The scale on the graph has 10 xright?
So this load profile is massive.
The the training workloads.
You mentioned something aboutbeing intelligent to know, okay,
(43:35):
when the waves happen, right?
And you, you're nodding to this,so I, I'm certain you know about
this, where these training loadscan go to a hundred to zero in a
matter of an hour, right?
So we really need softwareenabled smart systems to be able
to, smoothen some of those.
(43:57):
Those curves, right?
The rising and falling from fullload to idle.
So, you mentioned many timesduring the call that our grid is
not set up to, to handle thispattern.
So wanted to get your thoughts.
I mean, how do you see thisplaying out?
Not just on the industry side,but also on the power resiliency
(44:20):
slash battery side that you areactually championing.
Cole Ashman (44:23):
Yeah, the, the crystal ball that, that, you
know.
That, that I would look intohere.
It is just batteries will beeverywhere.
Our view is that there's a lotof utility, there's a lot of
value in getting batteries intobuildings because of the bill
savings and the backup power.
Like having batteries right nextto where the load is most useful
is often the right way to do it.
And that same.
(44:44):
Sort of line of thinking extendsto the data centers.
We're seeing a lot of datacenters coming online with
batteries built on that samefootprint, right?
So they have large batterysystems that, they're using to
buffer their expenses as they'reconsuming energy and, create
resilience for, for thosesystems.
So I think, one optimistic viewof this is this is a huge
(45:07):
opportunity.
You know, we now have thiscatalytic moment.
Where for national securityreasons for you know, economic
reasons and the rest, we wannaget these data centers built.
And because we're doinginfrastructure upgrade and
because we have the batterytechnology, it makes a lot of
sense to put those batteries inwith those new load centers.
And those will become some ofthe most valuable batteries on
(45:29):
the grid because they'reco-located with the load.
So, all, all of the superscalers, are, are thinking about
this and we're seeing lots andlots of folks who are
approaching data center buildouts this way.
And the extreme version of thatis completely off grid data
centers.
Like we have a lot of red tapewhen it comes to connecting new
things to our power grid.
(45:49):
Those permitting timelines canbe measured in months and years
in some cases, which, ain'tgonna work if you are trying to.
Win the AI revolution.
So, I think that's the, the sortof ul ultimate pendulum swing is
that, people are just bypassingthe grid in some cases.
I, I don't think that's going tobe the, um, default way of doing
things, but just to paint apicture at, what tools are
(46:12):
available today and how peopleare solving them with batteries.
But again, it's never a, a onesize fits all thing.
We'll have batteries at the datacenters.
We'll have batteries in ourbuildings.
The more batteries, across thegrid, the more efficient we can
operate our, our grid.
So our piece to play in this isnot necessarily.
At the industrial scale today,but we see tremendous value in
(46:33):
getting batteries across widergeographies of the grid.
So not just the more affluentresidential neighborhoods in the
suburbs, but also dense urbanareas and, commercial areas.
And, the thought exercise thatwe ran at the beginning of
founding Pila was, in 2024, wehad like 30 gigawatts of, of
battery capacity connected tothe grid.
(46:55):
And a much longer queue.
But that 30 gigawatts, like 80gigawatt hours if we imagined,
one ki sized battery in everyhome, perhaps next to a fridge
that gets you to almost 200gigawatts of battery capacity on
the grid.
So that, that's kind of thepower of distributed scale.
And of course.
(47:16):
We could in theory go faster,because, this is not a complex
permitting exercise.
It's just as easy as plugging itinto the outlet.
Shikher Bhandary (47:25):
So
Jed Tabernero (47:26):
Cheese.
Shikher Bhandary (47:29):
batteries at the edge is going to be future,
or it's already here, but it'smore about adoption.
Cole Ashman (47:37):
Absolutely.
I mean, we have batteries allaround us.
I bet you could look aroundyour, your room and count 10
things that are powered bybatteries.
So, it, we're already there.
But the next, the next chapterof this story.
Is getting those batteries towork together and kind of
support the whole energy systemversus just being sort of a, one
(47:58):
job only relativelynon-intelligent device and our
view is that batteries will bein everything, including
appliances, and we're alreadystarting to see that in some
cases and will just be builtinto our buildings by default.
But we also need solutions forrapid retrofit given how fast
all of these trends are kind ofemerging in front of us.
(48:18):
Our sort of standalone batterythat we've been talking about as
our first product, and we've gota, you know, long roadmap beyond
that includes larger, smaller.
And kind of different packagingwith within the systems in our
buildings.
Jed Tabernero (48:31):
But I, I do think that's the key, not necessarily
to solve the compute problemsolely, but generally to use
this technology that's in frontof us to our benefit, right?
To benefit the entire gridrather than just our very one
sole use cases.
It's getting so crazy.
I just have to point this out.
The last founder that weinterviewed is sending literally
(48:53):
data centers to space to solvefor the compute problem.
Right.
Get it off the grid, put it onspace, rely on solar.
Cole Ashman (49:00):
Talk about off grid.
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (49:02):
Yeah, talk about Edge
Jed Tabernero (49:05):
Yeah.
Literally the edge.
Right.
Um,
Shikher Bhandary (49:08):
Beyond the Edge.
Yes.
Jed Tabernero (49:09):
that's kind of what it's looking like to me is
that you have to solve thisproblem of resilience.
Right.
And a lot of people havecreative ideas on how to go
about this, and we've beenhaving them on our show, but
this one is a quite unique pieceof technology that we're super
excited about.
So I'm really thankful that youcame on and shared with us
(49:29):
today.
Man, this was really cool stuff.
Cole Ashman (49:32):
Thank you.
I love the conversation andappreciative to to be able to
share what we're doing with youand your listeners.
Jed Tabernero (49:39):
But when, one of the questions that, that maybe
you can help me address is whencan I protect my groceries?
Cole Ashman (49:45):
The most important question of all.
Save for last.
So first, first answer thecompany is Pela Energy.
So type in Pila Energy in yourbrowser, Pela or pela
energy.com.
You can get information about,you know, our, our product, the
specs and we're posting quite abit on our blog with.
Product updates and timelines.
Today, folks can put down a$99refundable deposit to, reserve
(50:09):
an early PLA unit.
The demand has been incredibleand we're excited to offer that,
that pre-order option and we'llbegin shipping units to, to
customers later this year.
Shikher Bhandary (50:21):
Awesome.
And different geographies orjust US based.
Right now, because I'm tellingyou, I made some calls this
morning.
I was speaking to, to somefriends and founders in in India
and they're like, oh my God,this is amazing.
So yes.
Cole Ashman (50:38):
Absolutely, we've designed the, the tech so that
it's kind of globallycompatible.
And we're, we're pretty excitedto get out there.
And, the European market,Australia, is, has been kind of
seeded with these whole homebatteries for a long time.
But yeah, India, Latin AmericaSoutheast Asia, you talk to
folks in, in Brazil and so manypeople that have a lead acid
(50:59):
battery bank in their hallway,in their apartment.
Right, because oftentimes powergets cut regularly, so they,
they're solving these problems,but, certainly they're they're,
they're looking in many casesfor more integrated, smarter,
elegant solutions.
And we see those as, incrediblyhigh potential markets and are
really excited to, be able tooffer products that aren't just,
(51:21):
this kind of premiumaspirational thing for maybe
your, your future dream home.
This is about getting startedtoday.
To us a.
Innovation isn't just aboutscale it's about access because
the future of energy isn't onlyabout mega projects nuclear
(51:44):
plants o data centers it's aboutwhether every household every
business and every person cankeep the lights on when it
matters most you've beenlistening to things of.
(52:05):
The view in this are of the.
This Conversation es for informpurposes and should not be
Financial.
The light flick fragile Thegetting older outages are
getting worse and the demandfrom s.
Ai en data center is explodingenergy resilience es no longer a
Cole Ashman (00:22):
we're living in this bizarre time where there
have been more billion dollarweather disasters in the last
three years than there were inthe entire two thousands in the
entire Katrina decade combined.
question led cole ash rethinkingwhat back.
Not massive Twenty thousanddollars systems for homeowners
(00:45):
but something different portablemodular Intelligent batteries
that meet people they
We think that we need solutions that are both as
smart as a Powerwall likebattery, but as affordable as
some of these smaller batterypacks.
Climate s aing ai the resiliencebecome a right not just a
(01:10):
privilege.
Jed Tabernero (01:48):
just about two weeks ago, my mom came and
visited me here in Jersey Cityand when she was unpacking her
stuff, she told me that she hada couple of medicines that she
needs to put somewhere and shesaid, Hey, it needs to stay
cold.
This is a treatment that shegets on a weekly basis.
It's quite important for her.
And I thought, okay, let me justclear some space out of the
(02:10):
fridge this.
Kind of experience I had with mymother just thinking about where
to put her medicine, somethingso critical to her that's gonna
be in the fridge.
I started thinking to myself,what happens if we lose power?
What happens then?
What happens to her medicine?
And we would think about ablackout.
These kind of cases where welive as something that's
(02:33):
annoying.
We're outta power for a while.
Maybe we lose internet.
But for some people, like mymom.
This stuff can be actuallypretty critical, right?
It can be critical for us tocontinue to have power to keep
her medications cold, and I'msure she's not the only one.
There's probably millions ofpeople that rely on very
important things that all youneed to do is refrigerate.
(02:54):
It could be a ccp, a P machine,it could be insulin.
It could be really importantstuff.
And so that's where today'sguest comes in.
Cole Ashman is the co-founder ofPila, a startup that's
re-imagining what home energystorage looks like.
Portable, affordable, modular,and smart.
It's not about powering yourwhole house, it's protecting
what matters most when thelights go out.
(03:18):
Kohl's helped build, portions ofthe Tesla Powerwall.
He worked on span smartelectrical panels.
We're really excited to have himhere today.
Cole, welcome to Things HaveChanged, podcast.
Cole Ashman (03:29):
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm excited for theconversation.
Jed Tabernero (03:33):
Great.
I just talked about a quoteunquote fridge moment for
myself.
What was your kind of fridgemoment?
What was that thing that reallystuck out to you that made you
wanna solve this specificproblem?
Cole Ashman (03:47):
It's funny you say fridge moment because for most
of us, like that's the thing,that's the biggest worry when
power goes out, and my, my, mystory in the power space has
been very resilient, focused mywhole career.
And I've always looked back to,my growing up in New Orleans.
I lived through HurricaneKatrina, which is 20 years ago
(04:08):
now, but one of the standoutvisuals post storm were
hundreds, thousands, tens ofthousands of refrigerators
discarded on the street, curbsin front of people's houses,
because, this was an extremeevent.
Whether they were flooded orwhether people had just left for
weeks on end and, the meat hadspoiled and whatever.
This is like kind of this noturning back point when, you
(04:31):
know, you're, you're not gonnascrub your fridge out and it's
easier just to toss it.
And, they sat for weeks andweeks.
So that's an image that's burnedin, in my mind and.
I was fortunate in my career towork on products at Tesla, like
their home battery, thePowerwall, and talked to lots
and lots of customers hangingout in their garage while the
installer was putting it in andjust asking like, Hey, why,, why
(04:51):
are you spending$20,000?
What was your motivation?
And they all had their fridgemoments too, so it's these.
These handful of reallyimportant things in our lives,
in our homes, whether it's,internet, you work from home
fridge, you're a new parent, andyou've got milk in the freezer,
or insulin, like you mentioned,a water pump, right?
That means you literally can'tturn your tap on if power goes
(05:11):
out.
There's several kind of reallyimportant loads and it's often
one or two of those thatmotivate people to do the big
upgrade and get a generator or abattery system that can be tens
of thousands of dollars.
Quite literally it was, it was afridge moment.
And the story of Pila, whichwe'll get into was just about
meeting people with productsthat kind of fit their budget
(05:33):
and their needs and moving awayfrom this big, complicated
multi-month upgrade that onlyhomeowners are really able to do
with permitting and the rest.
Just something that's more akinto modern products.
Mesh wifi nodes and Sonossystems and the rest that we're
all familiar with that are plugand play and can scale up over
time and, can come with you whenyou move.
(05:54):
We just thought there was anopportunity to do that for power
resilience, energy security, anda host of other things that
we'll get into.
Shikher Bhandary (06:01):
Thanks for that.
Cole.
uh, So Jed and I lived inCalifornia previously.
I live in Texas.
He lives in Jersey.
All these three states.
See rolling blackouts almostevery year.
Either it's due to drought,either it's due to wildfires,
flooding with a lot of climateinduced events.
You're seeing the grid beingaffected and it just seems like
(06:23):
this is gonna keep happening.
Right.
In terms of planned andunplanned outages in the US and
I'm not even talking aboutglobally because there was this
whole.
Weekend where Spain lost all ofits energy, all of Spain.
Yeah.
So this has happened more often.
The requirements of AI is justgonna go vertical if it already
(06:47):
hasn't.
So yeah, it just seems like thisis such a great space to kind of
dial in, because backup powerisn't really a thing in the US
for a renter or even ahomeowner.
Cole Ashman (07:01):
That's right.
Like by the numbers, the, it's12% of homes have a, a fossil
backup generator.
That's by and large, like thedefault solution.
Which, it's the last centuriestech.
It's noisy.
There's a lot of reasons that itworks and there's other reasons
why it doesn't work.
Like having to rely on a gasstation to refuel when the gas
station also often can't pumpgas when power goes out, versus
(07:23):
batteries which can recharge forfree from the sun while you go
clear your yard or, or whateverit is.
There's kind of three, threemajor trends that we look at in
this space that, that are, nosecret, right?
The first one is we have an oldgrid in the US we built the very
first power grid, to Americaninnovation at work, right?
But now that means we've gotthis really out, out of date
(07:45):
power grid and out of datebusiness models in some cases
for how to update it and out ofdate ways of thinking about
upgrading it versus other placesin the world.
We see that as opportunity.
The second one is load growth,right?
So we're not in a business asusual mode where we're just
hunkering down and trying tooperate the grid as we have for
the last several decades.
(08:06):
We've got EVs we've got AI anddata centers coming on with
increased velocity, trying toconnect to the.
We're some have forecasted adoubling of load growth in the
next few decades, which isastronomical.
And of course, that has to bemet with more generation.
So the whole system's changing.
And then the third one, whichyou alluded to is weather.
(08:27):
You know, like we're living inthis bizarre time where e every
part of the country is nowgetting faced with weather
events, whether it's, dichos andwindstorms in the Midwest,
whether it's fires out inCalifornia.
Strengthening hurricanes in thesouth, winter storms in the
north, it's just, it'severywhere.
Right?
And again, by the numbers, therehave been more billion dollar
(08:50):
weather disasters in the lastthree years than there were in
the entire two thousands in theentire Katrina decade combined.
So, it's not, it's not goingaway anytime soon.
And all of these things togethercreate this perfect moment,
perfect time for bettersolutions that can be scaled
really quickly, that can meetpeople where their need is at.
(09:10):
And of course, that's what we'reall about.
Jed Tabernero (09:12):
Yeah.
No, that, that's interestingbecause it's, you just pointed
out the three things that makeit a perfect time to innovate in
this space, but some peoplewould say that folks have
already come up with certainsolutions.
Right.
And this is kind of where I wasreally interested because what
really I'm thinking about as a,as a key question when we're
(09:34):
talking about the problems ofsolving this space is who's
getting left behind?
Right.
Something that we really focusedon in this research and
something that I comparedaverage cost and, how do you
think about these people whoneed to solve this same problem,
who can't afford an entire,power wall, right?
Cole Ashman (09:54):
That's right.
Jed Tabernero (09:55):
If that's the first at least solution that
came to my mind.
That's very public.
Folks understand that there's abattery at home.
You know, they get a Tesla, theyget the solar panels and they
get a Powerwall at home allinstalled for you to be able to
afford just even the Powerwall,you mentioned it in the intro
portion, it's like 20 to 30bucks, 20, 30,000 bucks, right.
Cole Ashman (10:15):
I wish it was 20 to 30
Jed Tabernero (10:16):
yeah.
Would've been a lot easier.
But that's.
If you look at the average UShousehold income, right, that's
maybe it's, it's like 60 K,something like that, that could
represent anywhere from 20% to50% of most Americans' income,
right?
You know, back to the question Iwas asking earlier, who's
getting left behind?
(10:37):
Well, it's the folks that can'tactually afford the quote
unquote traditional.
Backup power, I guess we cancall that traditional now.
It's been around for a coupleyears, I guess.
Um, and that's where, I think itmakes so much sense to build
more solutions that to yourpoint, are more consumer
friendly and that can scale.
I think the Powerwall is scalingvery slowly.
(10:59):
Great piece of innovation, greatpiece of technology, but it's
scaling very slowly, right.
So, yeah.
Cole Ashman (11:05):
Well let, and let's talk about categories of
products, right?
Like you just had an outage, youwanna solve it.
You never want that to happenagain.
You wanna protect your family.
This is often how this likebuying journey starts for homes
and for businesses.
You mentioned Powerwall andPowerwall like products.
These are big batteries thatoften go in the garage or bolted
to the side of your housebecause it's a complicated
(11:27):
electrical upgrade.
You need professionals to do it.
Electricians, their time isexpensive and there's kind of a
complicated permitting processto do these kind of upgrades.
Just like any major, major homerenovation, that's where a lot
of that price tag comes from.
The hardware, the batteries, alldistrict costs have come down,
but the total install cost for aPowerwall like system has kind
(11:48):
of remained.
Steady over the years to thepoint where now let's say you
get a quote for$20,000 for, anentry level single Powerwall
system.
About$10,000 of that is softcost permitting, design, sales
overhead, all of the rest.
Um.
That's the premium solution, andit's, it's such an incredible
(12:08):
solution.
And if folks have a battery likethat, or maybe they know someone
who does, they, they know peoplerave about it because it really
does feel like living in, thiscentury, it's seamless.
You don't even know the lightsgo off.
It's connected.
So you can be anywhere in theworld and you just like really
feel in control.
It's, it's incredible, but it'shard to get right.
So then, you start looking at,okay, well maybe I want a lower
(12:30):
cost solution.
Generators, natural gas,gasoline, diesel have been
around forever.
They're kind of the, thestalwarts, the incumbents in
this space.
Obvious downsides there.
And then, you know, you look tothe.
Lower cost battery solutions.
There's now a proliferation.
You can go on Amazon and see,dozens and dozens of companies
that sell these kind of campingbatteries.
(12:51):
Which, you know, you run anextension cord, you click a
button.
There's not really like asoftware, smarts element to most
of these, but you, you know,they're more designed for the
job site or kind of camping andthey really look out of place in
your home.
The industrial design is likepower tool, right?
It does not feel like it shouldbe
Shikher Bhandary (13:08):
It looks like you're, you are able to like
drill holes and plug anythinginto like a five socket.
I know this because I'mliterally gonna need it for a
hiking trip this weekend.
Cole Ashman (13:19):
And, these are great because they're low cost,
they're durable but they don'treally do anything for you other
than backup power, and they'revery manual, right?
So it's kind of a clunkysolution.
At the end of the day, if you'retalking about running extension
cords, my grandmother's notgonna do that kind of thing.
Right.
The average person might buythat if it's the only option,
but, but we don't think it hasto be the only option.
(13:39):
We think that we need solutionsthat are both as smart as a
Powerwall like battery, but asaffordable as some of these
smaller battery packs.
And the way that you do that isjust building these systems with
that infrastructure grademindset.
A power wall, but miniaturizingthem.
And that's kind of exactly whatwe've done with Pila.
(13:59):
The first product that we'velaunched is a slim battery.
Think meant to tuck above yourrefrigerator under your desk
next to your sump pump in thegarage with the chest freezer.
Wherever power is most importantto you, rather than one big
system put in all at once by aprofessional.
It's a small distributed systemthat can be set up, on piece by
(14:20):
piece, room by room.
And that is how you cut out allof this expensive costs and also
how you bring in those peoplethat you mentioned who are left
behind the renters, the condoowners, the folks that just
don't have, you know, the, thebudget for a big system.
And that's a huge, huge section.
Of the population.
There's, 130 million householdsin the US in total.
(14:42):
41 million of them are condosand multifamily, 45 million
rent, so in total, that's abouthalf of American households that
even if they could afford aPowerwall, just can't get one
because Powerwall is, reallydesigned for the single family
home with the garage and,rooftop solar and the rest.
Shikher Bhandary (15:01):
One of the main advantages here is it not
being hardwired.
We can just kind of plug andplay.
That means the next time Texashas a freeze, I can connect my
Xbox directly to a pela.
Forget about the fridge.
Jed Tabernero (15:13):
thinking about.
Come on, man.
Cole Ashman (15:15):
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (15:16):
Yeah.
But yeah, Cole, you, you touchedupon briefly about the mesh
network.
Can we kind of, dive a bit intothe technology and what you
think sets it apart?
Cole Ashman (15:28):
Let's go one, one step deeper here.
So outages are often how peoplestart thinking about their home
energy.
The obvious other one, ofcourse, is their bill.
Right.
And we're also in a world wherepower prices are precipitously
rising.
One in six households are, arealready behind on their energy
bills Out here in Californiawhere, power prices are rising
(15:50):
incredibly fast.
The retail rates are up 50% inthe last five years.
The, the load growth and datacenters are driving this up even
faster, right?
So our view is just like with aPowerwall, backup power is one
key pillar of, of why you wantthat system.
And the other is that 24 7 valueof helping you manage your
(16:11):
bills, understand your energy,and kind of automate some of
that.
Unnecessary spend away, once youhave, if you have a battery
sitting in your house, don't youwant it doing something for you
99% of the time when you don'thave an outage?
And that's, that's a systemschallenge and a software
challenge at the end of the day.
So for us that's kind of core toour DNA, how do we turn this
(16:33):
battery set of batteries into adistributed energy management
system, into a brain that canactually uplevel your home save
you money on your bill and sortof support, support the grid and
create new revenue streams forbusinesses and, and homeowners
while doing that, you know, so,so how do you do it?
Right.
Well, with the Powerwall system,it's like hardwired into your
(16:56):
garage, you know, it's all, it'sall kind of connected in and
centralized.
You can think about it like it'skind of a crude analogy, but you
can think about it like gettinginternet, 20 years ago or 15
years ago.
You have to have someone comeout.
There's a big box.
They run a coax cable.
It's, in one place and thenyou're running, ethernet cables
through the wall to switchplates like that.
(17:16):
That's the status quo in powertoday.
But no one does that obviouslyin, in internet today, we all go
out and buy Google Mesh, wifiand Eero, and you kind of ex
build out the system based onyour need.
You know, you live in anapartment, maybe you need one,
you know you've got theMcMansion.
Outside of Dallas and you'vegot, 15 mesh points.
(17:36):
But the beauty of that is it'skind of customizable and people
can build it out as they need.
Another great analogy in thisspace that many people are
familiar with is audio.
Just like home audio used tomean speakers in the wall
professionally installed with,remember the volume knob
Shikher Bhandary (17:53):
Yeah.
You have to go in like fourdifferent corners and turn on
the Sabo, right?
Yeah.
Cole Ashman (17:59):
Yeah, and you've got this big amp in the closet
and three years later it's outof date, and it's like that
again.
That's kind of the status quo inpower, the power space.
Our, our view is let's modernizethe power space and create these
nodes, which are batteries andenergy measurement and energy
control and compute.
In one easy, beautiful packagethat you can distribute, you
(18:21):
know where, where it mattersmost, and this could be five
across your home, but thissystem is again, infrastructure
grade because there's also needin multi-tenant.
To serve hundreds and hundredsof different appliances across a
building and for businesses aswell.
That's kind of how we see thisevolving in the necessary next
step to make it more accessible.
(18:42):
You asked about the mesh, that'sjust the connectivity between
all of these devices and, wetalk about this is like IOT 1.0,
internet of Things.
That's like your smart fridgeand smart washing machine.
I've never met anyone who hasever used those features and I
think I've met.
More people that have just beenannoyed by the fact that it's
smart.
So we have to think about like,how do we avoid that?
(19:03):
What were the mistakes, thatproduct manufacturers have made
over the last decade in tryingto jam smarts where they weren't
useful?
And a lot of that problem isconnectivity.
You have to keep it connected toyour wifi when you change out
your router, like everythingdisconnects.
And we wanted to solve thatproblem from the outset.
And one way you can do that isby keeping all of your devices
(19:24):
connected kind of natively.
So we've developed and, kind ofpatented this really interesting
mesh communication network.
At the end of the day, that'sjust a way to get all of these
batteries across your homeworking together in concert, in
a way that doesn't requirecomplicated setup in a way that
allows you to add more overtime.
But, when those batteries areworking together, that's how you
(19:44):
save money on your bills, andthat's how you, give people more
insight into their home.
Shikher Bhandary (19:48):
When you say working together.
It means like, say if it'snighttime, usually prices are
lower at night than, say at 1:00PM Hottest between one to like
six right?
During summer.
So you are saying it would besmart in the way that say you
have one P system connected tothe fridge, one to your Xbox One
(20:10):
to your.
Cole Ashman (20:11):
Window Air condition unit, sump pump, you
name it.
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (20:14):
Yeah, so all of them would probably be smart
enough to kind of trigger intakefrom the grid at a lower price
point.
Cole Ashman (20:22):
That's right.
That, and that, that's a greatway to think about this.
Ultimately, it comes down towhen are the batteries pulling
power?
When are they shifting thatpower to the devices that are
connected to them?
And how are they sharinginsights about how all of these
devices and the help of yourhome wiring is kind of
performing.
So, you know, for many of us, wehave time of use rates, which
(20:43):
just means powered.
Prices vary throughout the day.
So these, this coordinatedsystem is aware of that and it
can respond to those pricesignals to reduce your use of
high cost electricity.
And then of course, if you havesolar or if you connect solar,
that's free energy that you'regenerating at home.
So using that to offset.
(21:03):
Your expensive grid.
Electricity is another great wayto do that.
There and the use cases kind ofextend beyond that.
This is gonna go a little bitinto the weeds, but just to give
you an example of how, fastsoftware is changing our
buildings take a commercialbuilding that's adding ev
charging, it may have never beendesigned for that high power
draw.
(21:24):
So if they want to add EVchargers, their options are one,
pay for.
Tens or hundreds of thousands ofdollars of upgrades to the wires
coming into the building so thatit can power all of the EV
charging and everything else.
Or option two, add what's oftencalled an energy management
system, an EMS or a powercontrol system, A PCS.
(21:45):
This industry is laden withthree letter acronyms.
So apologies for that.
But the other option, ratherthan doing the kind of big
hardware upgrade to the buildingis a software upgrade to the
building and what that lookslike.
Is awareness of what's going onin real time.
'cause usually our buildingsaren't pulling at full capacity.
Usually, there are loads likeair condition and refrigerators
(22:06):
and EV charging that come on andoff throughout the day.
And the classic way of designingfor that is well shoot if they
all come on at once.
We gotta make sure the wires canhandle it, but that creates a
lot of inefficiency in design.
IE extra headroom.
So just by moving these loadsaround when things are using
power, hey Ev, charger one justturned on.
(22:27):
We need to throttle down EVcharger two or ask the rooftop
air condition system to reducecooling slightly.
And it's like kind of thisbalancing act, that allows you
to use the existing wires in thebuilding.
And of course, that's just much,much cheaper than pulling new
wires into every commercialbuilding.
So you know, the battery'sworking together.
Another tool is this kind ofsoftware orchestration using
(22:51):
batteries to offset the HVACusage when ev charging turns on.
So, and, and anyway, I'll stopthere because, I can go on and
on about this'cause it'sincredibly exciting and we're
really at the cusp in theindustry with this.
But that's what batteriesworking together means.
That's what, our kind of novelmesh tech enables.
Jed Tabernero (23:10):
That helps.
I don't see that in any otherUPS solution today.
Cole Ashman (23:14):
Right, because they're all, lead acid and,
basically designed for one job,which is when backup power is
needed.
They beep incredibly loudly andusually.
Shikher Bhandary (23:23):
That's ingrained in my childhood, in my
core memory, the beeping.
Cole Ashman (23:29):
Yeah, so the idea, the concept of backup power is
obviously not something that'snew, but this idea of can you
take that device and have it doa dozen other useful things for
you, you know that's the problemto be solved, which at the end
of the day means we just have todig up less materials out of the
ground and, make fewer batteriesbecause the batteries that we
have can do more for us.
Jed Tabernero (23:51):
You mentioned a little bit earlier about how
this can potentially relieve thegrid.
You see a future where a ton offolks have PA batteries at home
and all of a sudden our griddoesn't need to get
revolutionized.
I mean, I'm sure that's stillthe main goal is to maybe
modernize our old, really oldgrid systems, but this could be
(24:12):
a potential solu, get everybodya, a peel battery, you know what
I
Cole Ashman (24:15):
Absolutely.
I mean, that, that's whybatteries are the topic du jour
in the power industry.
So this thing that I justdescribed with like a commercial
building and loads needing to becontrolled, that exact same
thing is how the power gridoperates.
But instead of individual aircondition units, they think
about it as big generators and,solar plants and cities, you
(24:36):
know, and, and big industrialcustomers.
So traditionally we've built ourpower grid to a large degree for
some of these worst casescenarios.
You know, we, we have to buildsupply so that on the hottest
day of the year when everyone'srunning air condition and the
rest, you know, we have enoughcapacity.
That can create a lot of extraheadroom.
So, just like we were describingwith that building, you can
(24:56):
shift things around in time ormaybe kind of take them offline
by running them via batteriestemporarily.
That is a solution to you know,grid upgrade at the end of the
day.
And the same challenge exists.
How do you reliably.
Get all of these batteries to dowhat you want them to do when
you want them to do it fastenough.
And that that's kind of the corechallenge.
(25:18):
But relieving grid strain isabsolutely something that these
batteries can do.
This past month in Puerto Rico,you know, which has had tons and
tons of challenges with theirpower grid.
I mean, major island-wideoutages, going back to, you
know, 2015 with Hurricane Mariaand even this year there are a
lot of Tesla power walls inhomes in Puerto Rico.
And through this reallyinteresting thing called Virtual
(25:41):
Power Plants, VPPs, anotherthree letter acronym.
You can ask all of thosebatteries to kick in.
When there's not enough powerfrom the big power plants and
supplement them on those gridstrain kind of, moments.
And, you know, this is happeningright now.
This isn't kind of futuretheory.
And all of those households thathave power walls are, are
(26:03):
getting paid for thatperformance.
You know, this isn't just thisisn't just a feel good thing.
Like it's a real way to upgradeyour home and your business and
kind of help.
Ultimately like lower the costof owning that smart battery
backup system.
Jed Tabernero (26:18):
There's gonna be a lot of attention in how we.
Figure out how to not overloadthe grid, and this is just one
of the interesting ways to doit.
You mentioned that you werechatting with customers as well,
Coles, just to kind of figureout what people's problems were.
Do you have a most interestinguse case for somebody who needed
Pila?
Cole Ashman (26:37):
Well, we'll say the top ones, right?
So fridge is kind of this herouse case that we already talked
about.
And, and by the way,
Shikher Bhandary (26:43):
Bitcoin Mining.
Mining
Cole Ashman (26:45):
We have heard that, that, and
Shikher Bhandary (26:47):
what?
Cole Ashman (26:48):
Di different discussion, but you know, that
kind of load is actually greatfor grid participation because
it can scale up and down.
But different topic, you know.
So fridge is this reallyinteresting one and again, one
of the reasons why we thinkbattery is closer to the edge at
the appliance is interesting is'cause the data is more
interesting there.
We can tell you not only, oh,your whole home is powered, but
your refrigerator and freezerare at these exact temperatures
(27:11):
at this moment, and thereforeyour food is safe.
So having that relationship withthe appliance is another reason.
You know that this approach wethink is in some ways better
than the whole home expensivesystem, and certainly better
than the camping battery.
That's an extension cord pluggedinto the fridge and has no kind
of awareness, you know, no, noability to tell you more.
(27:32):
Peel is almost like an Applewatch for your fridge in, in
that case.
So that continues to be the onethat really, really drives kind
of adoption.
But there are fun other onestoo.
Like we've heard the salt water,fish tank folks, the reptile
aquariums, you know, and then,then some of like the, the more.
The more obvious ones likewindow air conditioning work
from home folks, you know, maybethey have their podcast set up.
(27:55):
You never know.
But it's really, really variesby household and, and by, by
geography.
And I think.
Because of that, it's soimportant to have a flexible
solution, and not say this isthe window air condition
battery, and this is the fridgebattery.
We have a, one, one size worksfor all of these loads,
approach.
Jed Tabernero (28:15):
Do folks qualify for the federal solar tax
credit?
When they get PI guess you, youprobably have to have more than
one unit to be able,'cause Ithink it's three kilowatt hours
is required.
Um,
Cole Ashman (28:27):
and there's there's a world of complexity and tax
credit.
Short answer is this year.
Folks qualify the OBVV Trump'sbill kind of put, put an end to
that benefit for federal taxcredits.
There are still, stateincentives and utility
incentives and the rest that aregonna continue to do a lot of
work in this space.
Jed Tabernero (28:47):
Gotcha.
Because that, that might besomething that also drives
folks.
One drives the price down, butjust incentivizes folks in
general to get going with thisstuff, so,
Cole Ashman (28:56):
absolutely.
And it's been, I mean, it's acomplicated topic.
You know, the 30% tax credit hasreally done a lot to lift this
industry.
It started with residentialrooftop solar.
Under the Inflation reductionAct, things like batteries and
electrical panel upgrades andthe rest we're kind of covered
more explicitly.
So it's unfortunate that it'sgoing away, but it's not a death
(29:17):
sentence for the industry.
Like this industry is one thatcan stand on its own two feet at
this point.
And like rooftop solar in the USis more expensive than most
places in the world.
You know, we're often above$4 awatt when places like Australia
and Germany are sub$2 per watt.
So you have certain folks, youknow, who are, sort of
expressing an opinion that thismight be a necessary reset for
(29:39):
the industry.
There's been a lot of kind ofpredatory sales tactics, and
it's kind of like the goldfishhas grown to the size of the
bowl where, you know, the costof solar hasn't, isn't
necessarily come down with that38% tax credit that's getting
passed on to the salespeople andthe lenders and the rest.
So, I'm optimistic about it andI know a lot of folks that, you
know, we work with and talk toin the solar and whole home
(30:01):
battery industry see a paththrough.
I, I think we willcounterintuitively see costs
come down as tri pricetransparency becomes you know, a
bit more business as usual inthis kind of industry.
Jed Tabernero (30:14):
In Europe, it's kind of been up and down with
credits as well.
I was just in Netherlands twoweeks ago and my father-in-law
has a strawberry farm.
They grow strawberries on glasshouses and the government is
offering a 50% tax credit.
To any farmers who put solarpanels on top of their glass
(30:36):
houses kind of insane, just paidfor itself.
But it was a huge project.
You had, millions of hectares,of glass houses, and these
policies change up and down, butit's just, that it, it's needed
for some places in order tomaintain the grid or just to
future proof yourself,
Cole Ashman (30:52):
absolutely.
And when it's there it's amazingupside, and it does help drive
adoption.
But our view is.
We don't wanna build productsthat depend on those kind of tax
credits.
And at the end of the day, themost important thing is what's
the upfront cost?
How can I get started with this?
And what we've heard from ourcustomers is, you know, the,
the, our entry price point is1299 versus a$20,000 Powerwall
(31:16):
system, or, you know, often moreexpensive for other brands.
And it's really that entry costthat is, you know, kind of the
core.
Dollars and cents number thatpeople think about.
And obviously 30% on a$20,000system's, different than 30% on,
a, on a much smaller system.
So, a lot of different ways toslice this, but again, continue
(31:36):
to be really optimistic that thelocal incentives and utility
incentives and state incentivesthey're, they're ramping up, you
know, despite what the currentfederal administration is is, is
doing on the federal tax creditside.
Shikher Bhandary (31:49):
Just the sheer demand of compute, of just
consumption across the boardwill just ensure that batteries
are always going to be neededand even more so going forward.
So the one one point there,Cole, you, you mentioned about
the Powerwall as well as thepillar, what appliances will
largely run on this?
We spoke about the fridge andall that stuff, but how long?
(32:12):
Would they run for?
Because I know we are talkingabout kilowatt r so I don't have
a number of how much a fridgeconsumes in a day.
In a week.
Cole Ashman (32:21):
And you, and no one should need to know that number
by the way.
But you know, like, so, so the,the short answer is average
fridge about 30 hours for ourkind of base device.
You can stack on a second oneand get to 60 for that extreme.
Case, but even better, you canplug in, a temporary solar panel
and kind of recharge it day today, to refuel even in the
multi-day outage.
(32:41):
For a window air conditioningunit that might be larger, using
more energy can be kind of 12 to15 hours.
But, these aren't numbers thatanyone needs to load into their
brain because we make it.
Very easy, your fridge, itsprofile.
We have this, relationship withthe device and we know what it
typically uses, how you use it,and both on a, very friendly
(33:01):
screen on the device.
There's an app if you want touse it.
We tell you exactly how muchbackup time you have left.
And if you plug in, more, thatwill adjust.
To help people ration thatenergy in the outage.
Because at the end of the day,like, kilowatt hours eyes gloss
over, and unfortunately that's,I think people in this industry
are so passionate about it thatthey, they love talking in these
(33:24):
terms, but you just lose theaverage person.
So, our approaches.
We're keeping your food safe.
Here's exactly how much backuptime you have.
If you want to see more, there'stons of other stats under the
hood, for most people, that'swhat it's all about.
Shikher Bhandary (33:37):
Yeah, that is such a good take on it because
so I may have some backgroundbecause I'm dealing with compute
and data centers.
So anyone says gigawatt,everyone's like, whoa, you know,
eyes roll back.
Right?
But what does that mean to aconsumer that literally just
needs their fridge running?
During a weather event, right?
(33:58):
Is it gonna be there for a day,two days, a few hours, just to
kind of get them through theevent?
Is it modular?
That is amazing.
I didn't realize that you couldstack up multiple pillars to
scale up.
It literally feels like, thecloud, you can just add more
servers and just kinda scaleout, which is amazing.
Cole Ashman (34:16):
Modular, flexible, right?
That's what every, every companyis talking about across hardware
and software.
And it's modular in two ways,right?
You can stack kind of at theroom level or the appliance
level, Hey, I want my fridgespecifically to run longer.
Or like we talked about with thekind of.
Mesh wifi node analogy, you cango room by room and spread them
across the house to alsoincrease kind of capacity for
(34:38):
that bill savings benefit.
Shikher Bhandary (34:41):
How's the reception been?
Clearly are getting a lot ofinterest and it feels like the
right time to be solving thisproblem.
How's that interest been?
I know y'all are, werefundraising, so how's that whole
process going?
Because again, we talk about it.
Jed and I are in the hardwarespace and it.
Expensive.
Right.
Hardware is, tends to beexpensive, but would love to get
(35:03):
your take on what, what are thevibes like in battery power,
resiliency world?
Cole Ashman (35:09):
Vibes are good.
Vibes are vibes are very good,is the short answer.
Um, we're, hey, we're, we'refortunate that, this is a very
real need in the market andthat's kind of been been
reflected in our ability to.
Bring on amazing people into theteam and, raise money and, get,
get orders for these units.
So we're working as fast as wecan to deliver them.
(35:29):
Later this year we launched outof stealth in March at South by
Southwest down in Austin.
Um, incredible reception there.
And, some of the conversationsthat.
I think resonated most with meand the team weren't with your
kind of typical tech enthusiast,early adopter, although like we
have some very cool featuresthere from the like home
assistant integrations and therest.
(35:51):
But it was with, Thegrandmother, grandfather, who
had never really even thoughtthat they could have a product
like this in their home.
It was from the, all, all walksof life from folks in, the
Midwest who had kind of maybeskewed more prepper style and
had their bunker next to theirhouse all the way to the,
downtown Austin resident.
Who was really interested in,the grid incentive program.
(36:12):
So I think we're finding thatthis idea of energy security and
energy resilience andself-sufficiency just kind of
hits on like.
Perhaps a very American kind ofcore identity.
And obviously that existselsewhere in the world, but
especially here in this country,people want to be
self-sufficient and I thinkwe're being tested now more than
(36:32):
ever with these outages andrising power bills.
And it just feels like one ofthese areas that you know is out
of control.
And then you say, oh, well wait,I can bring this back into
control.
That, that's amazing.
And hardware is hard.
No, no ifs, ands or buts aroundthat.
But fortunate to be working withan incredible team here who have
brought products to market atApple and Amazon.
(36:54):
And, a number of the team workedat Span on the smart electrical
panel with me.
Tesla Plus, our, our network offolks who have built products
across the industry.
Advising and, and thecoalescence of.
Brain power around this idea isreally, what's making it happen.
So feel incredibly fortunatethat the timing is right and
we've got the right folks tomake it happen.
Shikher Bhandary (37:16):
You mentioned both residential and commercial.
Are y'all thinking expandingoutside of just the residential
aspect?
Because the need is there,right?
Cole Ashman (37:26):
Absolutely.
I.
Jed Tabernero (37:27):
And not, not everybody has the bank account
or the wallet of Amazon to beputting generators and smart
machines in their buildings andstuff like that.
So I'm sure there's somecommercial use cases that you're
gonna find really interesting.
Cole Ashman (37:41):
Absolutely, and we're talking with, mom and pop
restaurant owners.
We're talking with small, mediumbusinesses and we're talking
with the big enterprisecustomers.
Look like traditionally energystorage for buildings has been
like rigidly sectioned intoresidential, commercial,
industrial, and there have beendifferent product classes for
each of those.
(38:01):
Powerwalls for residential.
Larger pad mount batteries forlight commercial.
And then like mega packcontainerized, 40 foot shipping,
container sized batteries forgrid scale and, and industrial.
In that kind of residentialcommercial space, we're finding
that we kind of have this newability to blur the lines
because.
This like mesh communicationnetwork and this distributed
(38:24):
modular design allows us toscale up again from like one in
your New York City kind of condoto hundreds of these across a
commercial property or across amulti-tenant building.
So absolutely both of thoseconversations and the ones that
have got me most excited aresome of these mom and pop.
Shop type owners because theseare folks who have never had the
(38:46):
right products for them, andjust have been left out.
And as we think about, impact,we want to make sure that, it's
not just the industrialcustomers and the commercial
customers at scale that areprotected, but also put the
power in the hands of thepeople, where, where one outage
could mean, significantfinancial strain for, a small
(39:07):
business, a restaurantespecially.
Shikher Bhandary (39:09):
Okay.
So this is amazing.
I mean, I guess this is thingshave changed exclusive.
So you have the PA, you have,different versions of that, and
then you have a giga pila, whichcan handle everything in a small
enterprise.
Cole Ashman (39:22):
And why has no one done this?
Right?
The challenge is getting all ofthese things to work together is
a really hard problem, and it'sone that, we feel kind of
uniquely able to put togethergiven our experience in this
space.
But in our grandest descriptionsof what we want to do, we talk
about upgrading the operatingsystem of our buildings.
We need a new OS for power andwhat's going to power that?
(39:44):
In the same way that you can'tlike run iOS 16 on a Nokia
phone, we kind of need betterhardware that enables the
software.
So our answer to the betterhardware is this distributed
plug and play compute plusenergy control and, and energy
storage.
That's the hardware that'srunning in this, this sort of
larger operating system acrossthese batteries.
(40:06):
And I think that's, that'swhat's most exciting to me as I
think forward to the next fiveand 10 years is.
Having smarter buildings thatare not only resilient when it
comes to power and kind ofmanaging their bill, but also
resilient from a compute, and abrain perspective.
What's going on with buildingall these data centers and the
way that we've kind ofarchitected our information
(40:27):
technology looks a lot like howwe built the grid, in the early
19 hundreds with big,centralized.
Big centralized systems, butinstead of a big generator, it's
a data center.
Well, what happens when thatconnection, fails, whether it's
something with your internetservice provider or whatever,
it's your building that's you'verelied on to be smart and take
care of you and the securitysystems and energy management.
(40:48):
Does that just become dumb?
We don't think it has to.
We think by putting, smartfocused kind of compute at the
right points, you can actuallyhave a.
Smart offline building as well.
And we think of that asresilience 2.0, power and
intelligence.
And of course that's not to saylike no data centers should get
built, but just like with thegrid coming at it from both ends
(41:11):
makes a lot of sense.
The big centralized system for,obvious reasons.
And then the local kind ofresilience, self-sufficiency
piece as well.
Shikher Bhandary (41:21):
Yeah, from reading your blog posts, and,
Jed and I are big believers ofabundance, energy abundance,
right?
We need to build nuclear powerplants and solar and battery and
literally just make sure that,we have access to power.
As AI compute kind of startsbecoming a sizable portion of
(41:43):
the consumption.
On the grid across the globe,right?
So just talking about scale,right?
These la these large AI labs areracing to build these multi
gigawatt scale dcs.
And to kind of put that intoperspective, right?
You know, our listener consumersout there might be thinking,
(42:05):
okay, what does that mean?
What does gigawatts even mean?
Right?
Training the latest AI model.
Can power the ci a city the sizeof Atlanta for the same time
period.
That's the scale that we aretalking about, right?
So GPD five.
Yeah.
GPD five is, will be likepowering Atlanta, right?
Or Seattle or one of these, bigcities, right?
(42:27):
So this is very, veryconsequential for the, for the
grid and everyone else, right?
For society because ultimatelywe tap into the par for our
livelihoods and our homes.
So this trend is not going Ithink, I'm close to the source,
but I was reading some articlesabout open AI's new cluster in
Texas is at peak will be ahundred gigawatts us.
(42:52):
Consumption.
Peak gig consumption is 700gigawatts.
So we are like getting close.
Now.
That training cluster is notgonna be at that scale all the
time, but even 10% of the entireconsumption of us, the us power
consumption is just.
Outta this world, like justridiculous.
Cole Ashman (43:14):
right?
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (43:15):
And we are talking about 12 months.
We've gone like in 14 months.
Our, the scales have just 10 xlike this.
The scale on the graph has 10 xright?
So this load profile is massive.
The the training workloads.
You mentioned something aboutbeing intelligent to know, okay,
(43:35):
when the waves happen, right?
And you, you're nodding to this,so I, I'm certain you know about
this, where these training loadscan go to a hundred to zero in a
matter of an hour, right?
So we really need softwareenabled smart systems to be able
to, smoothen some of those.
(43:57):
Those curves, right?
The rising and falling from fullload to idle.
So, you mentioned many timesduring the call that our grid is
not set up to, to handle thispattern.
So wanted to get your thoughts.
I mean, how do you see thisplaying out?
Not just on the industry side,but also on the power resiliency
(44:20):
slash battery side that you areactually championing.
Cole Ashman (44:23):
Yeah, the, the crystal ball that, that, you
know.
That, that I would look intohere.
It is just batteries will beeverywhere.
Our view is that there's a lotof utility, there's a lot of
value in getting batteries intobuildings because of the bill
savings and the backup power.
Like having batteries right nextto where the load is most useful
is often the right way to do it.
And that same.
(44:44):
Sort of line of thinking extendsto the data centers.
We're seeing a lot of datacenters coming online with
batteries built on that samefootprint, right?
So they have large batterysystems that, they're using to
buffer their expenses as they'reconsuming energy and, create
resilience for, for thosesystems.
So I think, one optimistic viewof this is this is a huge
(45:07):
opportunity.
You know, we now have thiscatalytic moment.
Where for national securityreasons for you know, economic
reasons and the rest, we wannaget these data centers built.
And because we're doinginfrastructure upgrade and
because we have the batterytechnology, it makes a lot of
sense to put those batteries inwith those new load centers.
And those will become some ofthe most valuable batteries on
(45:29):
the grid because they'reco-located with the load.
So, all, all of the superscalers, are, are thinking about
this and we're seeing lots andlots of folks who are
approaching data center buildouts this way.
And the extreme version of thatis completely off grid data
centers.
Like we have a lot of red tapewhen it comes to connecting new
things to our power grid.
(45:49):
Those permitting timelines canbe measured in months and years
in some cases, which, ain'tgonna work if you are trying to.
Win the AI revolution.
So, I think that's the, the sortof ul ultimate pendulum swing is
that, people are just bypassingthe grid in some cases.
I, I don't think that's going tobe the, um, default way of doing
things, but just to paint apicture at, what tools are
(46:12):
available today and how peopleare solving them with batteries.
But again, it's never a, a onesize fits all thing.
We'll have batteries at the datacenters.
We'll have batteries in ourbuildings.
The more batteries, across thegrid, the more efficient we can
operate our, our grid.
So our piece to play in this isnot necessarily.
At the industrial scale today,but we see tremendous value in
(46:33):
getting batteries across widergeographies of the grid.
So not just the more affluentresidential neighborhoods in the
suburbs, but also dense urbanareas and, commercial areas.
And, the thought exercise thatwe ran at the beginning of
founding Pila was, in 2024, wehad like 30 gigawatts of, of
battery capacity connected tothe grid.
(46:55):
And a much longer queue.
But that 30 gigawatts, like 80gigawatt hours if we imagined,
one ki sized battery in everyhome, perhaps next to a fridge
that gets you to almost 200gigawatts of battery capacity on
the grid.
So that, that's kind of thepower of distributed scale.
And of course.
(47:16):
We could in theory go faster,because, this is not a complex
permitting exercise.
It's just as easy as plugging itinto the outlet.
Shikher Bhandary (47:25):
So
Jed Tabernero (47:26):
Cheese.
Shikher Bhandary (47:29):
batteries at the edge is going to be future,
or it's already here, but it'smore about adoption.
Cole Ashman (47:37):
Absolutely.
I mean, we have batteries allaround us.
I bet you could look aroundyour, your room and count 10
things that are powered bybatteries.
So, it, we're already there.
But the next, the next chapterof this story.
Is getting those batteries towork together and kind of
support the whole energy systemversus just being sort of a, one
(47:58):
job only relativelynon-intelligent device and our
view is that batteries will bein everything, including
appliances, and we're alreadystarting to see that in some
cases and will just be builtinto our buildings by default.
But we also need solutions forrapid retrofit given how fast
all of these trends are kind ofemerging in front of us.
(48:18):
Our sort of standalone batterythat we've been talking about as
our first product, and we've gota, you know, long roadmap beyond
that includes larger, smaller.
And kind of different packagingwith within the systems in our
buildings.
Jed Tabernero (48:31):
But I, I do think that's the key, not necessarily
to solve the compute problemsolely, but generally to use
this technology that's in frontof us to our benefit, right?
To benefit the entire gridrather than just our very one
sole use cases.
It's getting so crazy.
I just have to point this out.
The last founder that weinterviewed is sending literally
(48:53):
data centers to space to solvefor the compute problem.
Right.
Get it off the grid, put it onspace, rely on solar.
Cole Ashman (49:00):
Talk about off grid.
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (49:02):
Yeah, talk about Edge
Jed Tabernero (49:05):
Yeah.
Literally the edge.
Right.
Um,
Shikher Bhandary (49:08):
Beyond the Edge.
Yes.
Jed Tabernero (49:09):
that's kind of what it's looking like to me is
that you have to solve thisproblem of resilience.
Right.
And a lot of people havecreative ideas on how to go
about this, and we've beenhaving them on our show, but
this one is a quite unique pieceof technology that we're super
excited about.
So I'm really thankful that youcame on and shared with us
(49:29):
today.
Man, this was really cool stuff.
Cole Ashman (49:32):
Thank you.
I love the conversation andappreciative to to be able to
share what we're doing with youand your listeners.
Jed Tabernero (49:39):
But when, one of the questions that, that maybe
you can help me address is whencan I protect my groceries?
Cole Ashman (49:45):
The most important question of all.
Save for last.
So first, first answer thecompany is Pela Energy.
So type in Pila Energy in yourbrowser, Pela or pela
energy.com.
You can get information about,you know, our, our product, the
specs and we're posting quite abit on our blog with.
Product updates and timelines.
Today, folks can put down a$99refundable deposit to, reserve
(50:09):
an early PLA unit.
The demand has been incredibleand we're excited to offer that,
that pre-order option and we'llbegin shipping units to, to
customers later this year.
Shikher Bhandary (50:21):
Awesome.
And different geographies orjust US based.
Right now, because I'm tellingyou, I made some calls this
morning.
I was speaking to, to somefriends and founders in in India
and they're like, oh my God,this is amazing.
So yes.
Cole Ashman (50:38):
Absolutely, we've designed the, the tech so that
it's kind of globallycompatible.
And we're, we're pretty excitedto get out there.
And, the European market,Australia, is, has been kind of
seeded with these whole homebatteries for a long time.
But yeah, India, Latin AmericaSoutheast Asia, you talk to
folks in, in Brazil and so manypeople that have a lead acid
(50:59):
battery bank in their hallway,in their apartment.
Right, because oftentimes powergets cut regularly, so they,
they're solving these problems,but, certainly they're they're,
they're looking in many casesfor more integrated, smarter,
elegant solutions.
And we see those as, incrediblyhigh potential markets and are
really excited to, be able tooffer products that aren't just,
(51:21):
this kind of premiumaspirational thing for maybe
your, your future dream home.
This is about getting startedtoday.
To us a.
Innovation isn't just aboutscale it's about access because
the future of energy isn't onlyabout mega projects nuclear
(51:44):
plants o data centers it's aboutwhether every household every
business and every person cankeep the lights on when it
matters most you've beenlistening to things of.
(52:05):
The view in this are of the.
This Conversation es for informpurposes and should not be
Financial.
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