Pila Energy brings mesh home battery to NYC residents

New York City homeowners now have two new ways to get battery backup power without the construction work traditional whole-home systems require. Pila Energy makes a plug-in mesh battery that works like an appliance: you plug it into a standard 120-volt outlet, no electrical work or permitting needed. That matters in NYC, where code restrictions have made whole-home batteries hard to install. The battery is listed at $1,499 for 1.6 kWh of storage, and it can keep essentials like a refrigerator, Wi-Fi router, window air conditioner, or medical device running during an outage.

The first new option is a pilot with Brooklyn SolarWorks, a rooftop solar installer with a decade of experience on the city's trickier buildings. Homeowners with solar panels can pair them with a Pila battery to store extra power generated during the day and use it later when electricity rates are highest, plus keep essential devices running if the grid goes down. Some Brooklyn and Queens households are already doing this.

If you don't have solar or aren't part of that pilot, there's a second option: Pila Neighborhoods, a national program that lets neighbors on the same block or in the same building organize together to unlock group discounts on batteries. The idea is that as more households nearby sign up, the price drops for everyone, and a cluster of batteries can add some resilience to a whole block, not just one home.