Americans lost more power in 2024 than in any year in the past decade, a new report by the Energy Information Administration found. While most of the causes were severe weather events, it's estimated that about one in four households throughout the country dealt with at least one outage annually.
One solution for this ongoing problem? A first-of-its-kind backup battery that is as sleek as an Apple laptop and plugs directly into specific devices (like a fridge or sump pump) to keep them running during a blackout. It's called the Pila battery, and it's priced at a fraction of what a whole-home generator or battery system typically costs.
The Cool Down caught up with Pila's founder, Cole Ashman — an engineer by trade who worked on Tesla's Powerwall and SPAN's Smart Electrical Panel before founding his own company — to learn more about what makes the Pila battery so unique.
The big draw is the ease of use. Unlike a typical backup battery or home generator, Pila's batteries don't require an electrician to set up. Users just plug the battery straight into a standard wall outlet, and then plug the appliance they want to back up into the other end. This means the battery can be fully on display in someone's home, which was an intentional choice, Ashman told us.
"We've worked with some really incredible designers and engineers to make this battery look and feel like a home product, not like something that belongs outside of your house on a concrete pad," he said.
Plus, if the power goes out, the brand says each battery can, for example, keep a fridge running for up to 32 hours, maintain Wi-Fi connection for 132 hours, charge your smartphone 113 times, or keep the AC on for six hours.
"Power passes from the wall to the battery to the [appliance like a] refrigerator, and if power goes out, it will automatically disconnect from your home and turn that kitchen area or your den [etc] into an island of power," Ashman told The Cool Down.
Where did the idea behind Pila come from?
Ashman grew up in the New Orleans area and lived through Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — a catastrophic hurricane that killed 1,833 people and caused roughly $179 billion in damage in today's dollars, making it the costliest hurricane to ever hit the United States.
"It was this massive systems failure awakening moment where, for many people [they saw that] levees can fail, [electrical] grids can collapse," Ashman told The Cool Down. It was a visualization for what life looks like "when the comfort of modern life is kind of ripped away, maybe for longer than just a few hours."
"Seeing that and living through that," he said, "definitely set me on a path on the energy side."
Ashman went on to study chemical engineering in college and held internships at oil and gas companies, where he got to see big energy infrastructure up close for himself.
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Not at all 🙅 "[I was] getting to understand how it works, but also recognizing that this isn't going to be the technology that carries us into the next 100 years," he said.
From there, he went on to work on Tesla's Powerwall team and then at SPAN, an electrical panel startup in San Francisco. Ashman said he was proud of the products, but, as someone renting an apartment in a major city, he never actually used them himself. That's why he decided to make the jump to start Pila, which officially launched in 2025.
"Pila was ultimately driven by a really strong conviction around the need for more accessible products that could deliver that incredible Powerwall-like experience in a more focused way for folks," he said.
So he set out to create the Pila battery, which is vital in emergencies and much more affordable, while still helpful on a daily basis for the average person.
Who should use the Pila battery?
Ashman said the battery is helpful not just for homeowners looking to back up their house during outages, but also for people renting apartments or homes, which is about 30-35% of all U.S. households. Whereas there are plenty of home backup solutions for homeowners (even if they are often pricey and often run on dirty fuels), there were virtually no renter-friendly home resiliency options available before Ashman founded Pila.
"What do you do as a renter? How often are you really going to your landlord and saying, 'Hey, I've got this fantastic idea, we're going to rip up the walls [to install a back-up system], and then I'm going to move out in a year.' It just doesn't make sense for that big, big upgrade for most folks," Ashman said.
By contrast, the Pila battery doesn't require any expensive electrical upgrades, and it's portable, so renters can take that backup power with them wherever they move next.
Plus, even traditional homeowners can benefit from that portability aspect, Ashman said. On average, people live in their homes for just about 12 years before moving, so "even for folks that are just looking to get started and they may own their home, having something that can be taken with them, upgraded over time, I think there's a lot of value there," he said.
Unexpected benefits of Pila's battery
Beyond the Apple-like design of the batteries and their portability benefits, Pila allows users to save serious cash by preventing outage-related expenses like having to replace food that's gone bad in the fridge and freezer.
"The average person may have a few hundred dollars of food in their fridge … so just purely from a resilience standpoint, you're talking one or two outages for the upfront cost [of the battery] to be paid off," Ashman said.
Beyond that, the batteries are entirely modular, so if you want to add more power to other devices, they'll connect automatically and help manage energy across your home. That's because the batteries are set up to pull in electricity when it's cheapest (typically overnight or during the middle of the day) and store it for use when energy is pricier.
The batteries can also be connected with a home's solar panels to store energy produced when the sun is shining for use at night or solely as a backup option.
Where can someone buy the battery?
Pila's battery system is available for preorder via its website, with shipments starting nationwide in early 2026. When someone preorders a Pila battery for $99, they lock in the total price of the battery at $1,299. Since Pila batteries don't require an electrician's installation costs, that reduces the upfront cost significantly.
The company isn't sharing pre-order numbers publicly, but Ashman says that "the demand has been really exceptional" so far.
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