The city’s grid needs large batteries, yet the rules governing them remain difficult to change. Rather than waiting for the regulations to catch up, a number of startups are placing smaller batteries where they would not normally be found: inside induction stoves and food carts alike. The reasoning behind this approach is unexpectedly ambitious.
PopWheels Swaps Out E-Bike Batteries
A swapping station network was created by PopWheels for riders using e-bikes to move packages through the city. Instead of stopping to charge, drivers trade out drained batteries for new ones at a cabinet. Cofounder David Hammer says there are roughly 50 cabinets scattered across New York City, along with approximately 2,500 batteries circulating among them.
At a New York Climate Week event held on September 24, Hammer addressed the biggest hurdle facing companies that provide large-scale centralized energy storage. His argument was straightforward: the advantages these providers offer exist mainly as ideas, while their expenses are tangible and immediate.
Copper Cooks With Integrated Backup Power
The firm Copper manufactures induction stoves that come equipped with built-in batteries. These appliances enable people to cook even when the electricity fails, and they might also assist property owners in dodging costly electrical improvements, since the battery supplies some of the energy while the stove operates.
“We’re not just selling a battery for resilience—we’re selling it for cost savings,” Sam Calisch, cofounder and CEO of Copper, said at the event.
About four of Copper’s batteries can supply five kilowatt-hours of electricity, enough to roughly cover a day’s operation for many carts.
Home Batteries For Air Conditioners
A number of firms now offer plug-in batteries for buildings, and Every Electric and David Energy are among those operating in that field.
The company supplies the batteries for Every, which are meant to plug into an air-conditioning unit. Customers get paid by the company to cut back on their use during peak demand periods. David Energy runs a comparable operation, concentrating instead on businesses such as:
- Laundromats
- Parking garages
- Gyms
Since these batteries are compact or integrated directly into other devices, they usually do not demand grid upgrades or major permitting procedures. You simply connect them up and benefit from them, much like the expanding trend of balcony solar systems.
What McGinniss Says
James McGinniss, cofounder and CEO of David Energy, is quoted as saying “This is the biggest thing to happen in the power grid sector in the last 20 years,”.
Calisch pushed the idea further. He argued that if every stove in America came with a battery, the total could reach tens of gigawatts of power. That represents capacity that could be combined and drawn on when the grid is under strain.
| Company | What They Make | Key Detail |
|---|---|---|
| PopWheels | Battery-swapping cabinets for e-bikes | ~50 cabinets, ~2,500 batteries in NYC |
| Copper | Induction stoves with integrated batteries | Four batteries cover ~5 kWh per day |
| Every Electric | Plug-in batteries for AC units | Pays customers to reduce use during high stress |
| David Energy | Business-focused plug-in batteries | Targets laundromats, parking garages, gyms |
The Pushback Against Big Batteries
Around the globe, large utility-scale battery systems are being deployed rapidly. However, some communities—particularly densely populated urban areas such as NYC—are resisting these projects due to worries over the relatively uncommon but highly publicized incidents involving battery fires.
That issue gets sidestepped thanks to the distributed design. Since the batteries tend to be small and frequently incorporated directly into other devices, they usually don’t call for grid upgrades or major permitting hurdles.
It is worth noting that the requirement for large-scale energy storage remains a persistent need. More extensive installations will be essential to sustaining the output of intermittent sources such as wind and solar, enabling them to contribute to a greater share of our rapidly rising electricity demand.
The Grid Gets More Distributed
A shift toward distributed batteries might mark a major change for the grid, according to MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter, The Spark.
Summer blackouts are a growing concern in dense urban centers such as New York, where the power grid is becoming increasingly congested. Solutions that can prevent such outages are clearly needed.
The tale derives from The Spark, a weekly climate newsletter published by MIT Technology Review. For a subscription delivered to your inbox every Wednesday, you can register here.
A real change has come to how the grid gets built. Rather than one large box on a pole, the power now arrives from a stove in your kitchen or a cabinet outside your door. The technology already exists, the companies are selling it, and the numbers add up quickly.
The question is whether tens of gigawatts of aggregated household capacity can really step in when the grid is stressed. It’s an interesting test, and it’s one the industry is running right now.
Source material: “How smaller, distributed batteries could help the grid,” MIT Technology Review.
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