AUSTIN — An Austin-based company has teamed with Austin Energy to offer home battery backup systems designed to keep houses powered during outages while also creating a flexible resource for the electric grid.
What the program offers
Base Power, a local startup, installs and owns the battery systems while participating homeowners pay a one-time installation fee and a monthly service charge. The arrangement aims to reduce the upfront barrier that often keeps homeowners from buying stationary battery systems outright.
- Installation fee: $695 (one-time)
- Monthly charge: $19 per month
- Backup duration: roughly one to two days, depending on household energy use
The batteries are designed to automatically take over within a fraction of a second when the grid goes down — whether the outage is caused by extreme weather, a fallen tree, a vehicle striking a utility pole or equipment damage from wildlife. Unlike portable generators, the systems produce no noise or fuel emissions while running.
"We lost power at least three of the last four ice storms," said an early Austin Energy customer, describing why he chose the system.
How the grid benefits
Beyond household resilience, the partnership allows Austin Energy to use thousands of connected batteries as a virtual power plant. When the grid is operating normally, the utility can draw small amounts of energy from participating homes to help balance supply and demand, potentially easing strain during peak periods and reducing the need for more expensive or polluting resources.
Base Power co-founder and CEO Zach Dell said the company’s concept was inspired by the widespread outages during Winter Storm Uri in 2021, when large numbers of Texans lost power for days. The startup’s approach is pitched as a resiliency tool both for homeowners and for the utility.
Local stakes and context
For Austin and Travis County, the rollout touches on several policy and planning priorities: improving household-level emergency preparedness, reducing reliance on backup generators that require fuel and create noise, and increasing the grid’s flexibility as extreme weather events become more common. For Austin Energy, the program offers a way to tap distributed storage without purchasing and siting centralized resources.
| Element | Detail |
|---|---|
| Provider | Base Power (startup) |
| Utility partner | Austin Energy |
| Customer cost | $695 installation, $19/mo service |
| Backup time | ~1–2 days (varies with usage) |
As the program expands, city officials and consumers will watch how widely the system is adopted, whether the distributed batteries meaningfully reduce outage impacts, and how the virtual power plant interactions are managed to protect customer needs and data. For many Austin homeowners who experienced lengthy outages in recent storms, the new option may offer practical relief without the costs and maintenance of traditional backup generators.
