Homeowners looking to pair rooftop solar with backup batteries may soon have an easier way to build a smarter home energy system.
Power management company Eaton and home energy storage company FranklinWH have linked up their smart breaker and battery technology for homes across North America.
The plan brings together two specialties: Eaton's power-management business and FranklinWH's home energy storage technology, pairing smart breakers with home solar and battery setups.
What happened?
According to Energies Media, the newly announced tie-up is intended to make home energy systems simpler to purchase, install, and expand over time.
In both retrofit projects and newly built homes, Eaton's AbleEdge smart breakers will be integrated with the FranklinWH system.
The setup is meant to do more than provide backup during a blackout. It's also designed to help homeowners control household loads, use stored electricity more effectively, and keep backup power available for longer when the grid is down.
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Eaton, which dates back to 1911, reported $27.4 billion in revenue in 2025 and serves customers in more than 180 countries. FranklinWH, founded in 2019 in the San Francisco Bay Area, builds modular home backup units that draw on solar, the grid, and generators for power.
Why does it matter?
Smart breakers can help a home decide where electricity should go when available energy is limited.
During an outage, that could mean prioritizing essential needs such as refrigeration, internet service, medical equipment, or heating and cooling over less important circuits.
The partnership could also reduce some of the friction that keeps people from moving forward with home energy upgrades. If installation and energy management become more streamlined, homeowners may have an easier path to adding solar and storage without having to piece together multiple disconnected products.
Eaton said its AbleEdge breakers could also bring virtual power plant capabilities to the FranklinWH System, letting homes take part in a more flexible grid.
That means a battery-backed home may be able to respond more intelligently to changing grid conditions instead of functioning only as an isolated system.
What's being done?
The companies said Eaton's AbleEdge smart breakers can be fitted into existing load centers and connected to the FranklinWH Meter Adapter Controller.
That gives contractors and homeowners a way to upgrade older homes while also making the technology available in newly built houses.
Contractors and homeowners will also be able to use the FranklinWH App for setup, commissioning, management, and monitoring of both companies' technologies. A single control point could make it easier for homeowners to understand their energy use and for installers to get systems up and running more efficiently.
"FranklinWH is committed to enabling more resiliency and energy freedom for homeowners looking to add storage to their home," said Gary Lam, CEO and Co-Founder of FranklinWH, per Energies Media. "By integrating Eaton's AbleEdge smart breakers with our FranklinWH System, homeowners will gain new visibility and control over their energy use."
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