S9 Ep61: Bright Ideas: Smarter Energy for Your Home with Cole Ashman
“In the entire decade of the 2000s, we had about a third of the billion-dollar weather disasters that we've had in the last three years. So in the last three years, we've surpassed threefold that entire previous decade. And it's not only fires in California and the West Coast— it's floods, it's storms, it's winter storms, wind storms. Most states are contending with this in some form or another.” —Cole Ashman
Tired of outdated power systems leaving you in the lurch? Discover how cutting-edge technology is putting the power back in your hands, offering a smarter, more reliable way to keep your home energized.
Inspired by the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, Cole Ashman has dedicated his career to transforming the energy landscape. With a background at Tesla and a passion for innovation, Cole founded Pila Energy to create affordable, smart home batteries that empower individuals and communities. His journey offers fresh insights into the democratization of energy technology.
Tune in as Justine and Cole tackle the challenges of outdated power grids, the development of Pila Energy's smart backup battery, and the importance of making sustainable, affordable energy solutions accessible to all.
Connect with Cole:
Cole Ashman is the innovative founder of Pila Energy, a company dedicated to making smart home battery solutions accessible to all. With a background in engineering and experience at Tesla, Cole has been instrumental in developing Pila's modular home batteries, which offer a cost-effective alternative to traditional backup power systems. Inspired by his experiences during Hurricane Katrina, Cole is passionate about providing reliable energy solutions that empower individuals and communities. His work at Pila Energy reflects a commitment to sustainability, innovation, and making advanced technology available to a broader audience.
Episode Highlights:
02:51 A Wake Up Call From Hurricane Katrina
05:10 Market Gap in the Energy Space
08:12 Pre-Market Product and Customer Response
10:29 The Impact of Power Outages and Market Trends
17:44 Community Support and Future Innovations
20:00 Consumer Decisions and Environmental Impacts
25:23 Innovation for Evolving Consumer Needs
Tweets:
Power outages got you down? Discover @pilaenergy’s smart battery solution as @justine.reichman and Cole Ashman talk about making energy independence affordable. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #PilaEnergy #SmartTech #SmartHome #EnergySolutions #Sustainability #Innovation
Inspirational Quotes:
01:03 "More and more of us are getting hit with power outages and rising utility bills. It's kind of a mess out there right now." —Cole Ashman
01:48 "Pila is aimed to be the more accessible alternative to that premium home battery, but at a price point that matches that of an off-the-shelf generator." —Cole Ashman
02:19 "As global warming and as things evolve on the planet, we're really going to have a need for accessible energy." —Justine Reichman
03:02 "Hurricane Katrina knocked out power and disrupted things way beyond that, and from that moment onward, I was obsessed with these invisible systems that keep life running smoothly." —Cole Ashman
04:13 "The story started with the question, how do we merge intelligence with the dominant product for backup power?" —Cole Ashman
05:11 "Batteries as we know them today were inspired by electric eels which have internal organs that are stacked together." —Cole Ashman
11:11 "Outages are becoming a more common thing that we're dealing with, not only in the US, but abroad." —Cole Ashman
16:59 "We want to move fast and give people tools to put the power in their hands." —Cole Ashman
21:03 "Get started. Don't be your own biggest barrier and don't be afraid to learn and fail." —Cole Ashman
22:02 "Surround yourself with people that can help orient the path, people that you trust to give advice." —Cole Ashman
22:36 “Be authentic. Be genuine. Have the founder there, because people want to invest in founders.” —Justine Reichman
Transcription:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. Guys, it's your friend, Justine. Your weekly host that brings you lots of new founders and innovators in the space around the impact of food on our healthcare, lifestyle, beauty, fashion, and the planet. And today, we have Cole. And Cole is the Founder of Pila.
Cole Ashman: Hello, Justine. It's great to be here.
Justine Reichman: I'm excited to learn about what you've created here, the inspiration behind it, and where you see it going? Accessible energy. So for those not familiar with Pila, would you just give them the high level of it?
Cole Ashman: Yeah, absolutely. First, I'll step back even before I talk about the product and talk about the changing world that we're living in when it comes to energy. I think, unfortunately, more and more of us are getting hit with power outages and rising utility bills. It's kind of a mess out there right now. As a student of this, we have the oldest power grid in the world. We built the very first electricity grid in the US. And now, it's very old. And there are all kinds of things from fires on the west coast to stronger storms that are knocking it out more and more. And that affects us, everyone across the country. And whether it's your internet going down or your food going bad in your fridge, we're having to figure out how to solve this. So there have been backup generators, gas powered backup generators for a long time. In the past 10 years, we've seen these very premium Smart Home batteries come onto the market. I've worked in that space for a while, but Pila is aimed to be the more accessible alternative to that premium home battery. But at a price point that matches that off the shelf generator. So we are a smart backup battery that pairs with your essential appliances, your refrigerator, your window air conditioning unit, sump pump, the Wi Fi in your den, you name it.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. That sounds really accessible. It sounds like it's attainable for the majority of the population. And something that as global warming and as things evolve on the planet, we're really going to have a need for, I know that a lot of my neighbors have generators. I don't have a generator. I've often thought about, do we need a generator? What would that look like? How much does that cost? Is it running on gas? Is it running on power? All these different things between space and cost. There's lots of different factors to consider, so this sounds like a great solution. Coming up with something like this, I'm sure there's a story behind it.
Cole Ashman: Absolutely, yeah. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time, even before my professional career. I grew up in New Orleans. And in 2025, 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina knocked out power and disrupted things way beyond that for us. And from that moment onward, I kind of became a bit obsessed with these invisible systems that literally keep the lights on, and keep life running smoothly. And you know what it feels when those systems kind of disappear in a moment? Studied engineering and had the opportunity to work at Tesla on the home battery product, the Tesla power wall and solar. And then for the last four years, I helped lead a product team at a company called Sam who kind of innovated around this smart electrical panel concept. Taking that fuse box circuit breaker panel, and turning it into a full fledged control device and computer. All of that's great.
But the through line for me has always been, are my friends and family outside of California adopting the technology? Because this is really smart stuff, but you have to own the home. And often, it's a five figure upgrade. You're talking $20,000 more, and a lot of that's labor and custom design. It's a big build out, right? Even if you're getting a gas generator, it's a pretty expensive thing to do. So the story is started with the question, how do we merge that intelligence with the kind of dominant product for backup power? Which are these kinds of antiquated, old pole start gas generators that collect dust in the garage. And half the time, they may not even work because you're supposed to maintain them, and no one does. Blending that with the intelligence of these quiet, seamless, Smart Battery products. And so that was the genesis of Pila setting out to solve that mission. And the name is a bit of an homage to one of the godfathers of this age, a guy named Alessandro Volta, an Italian guy. He's credited with making the first electrochemical battery. So batteries as we know it today. His innovation was stacking metal plates together, and that stack, or if you're an Italian, that Pila pile formed the first tabletop battery. And that story of how that battery was created, it was inspired by electric eels to have internal organs that are kind of stacked together. So there was something really inspiring about this story of innovation, drawing lessons from nature. And for us, we are making smaller modular home batteries. So there was something about that tabletop device that also really stood out to us. And we also thought it sounded nice.
Justine Reichman: And so you took a lot of your experience from what you did at Tesla, coupled with the experience about Katrina, and put that together and came up with this solution. So tell me about your experience in Tesla, and what you did? How is that directly related to what you were able to create?
Cole Ashman: Yeah, absolutely. What an incredible place to learn. Some of the smartest people I've ever met were working at Tesla at the time. At the time that I was there, I had a really fun job of traveling around the globe. The US, Australia, Europe, Japan and beyond. Working with electricians and homeowners to take the new stuff that we were building at HQ and pilot it, understand where the rubber meets the road. And how we push the ball forward in this very regulated industry that's really safety focused and tends to be slow moving, but taking the fast moving California startup, or startup mindedness approach. So really incredible learning, and Tesla created the category of the modern smart home backup battery.
For a long time, there were these lead acid things like car batteries that you could stack together with wires running everywhere, and it was a very niche thing. And what Tesla did was turn that into something that was architectural and significantly easier to install all in one box. But Tesla and the folks that have come after them have largely been focused on single family owner occupied homes that are getting rooftop solar, and adding a battery at that time. And that's left out a lot of small businesses, but also renters and condos, folks that live in more urban areas or multi unit buildings, and just homeowners that aren't ready to spend $20,000 or more on that kind of upgrade. Often, it is just a handful of very important appliances and devices that you care about. If you're coming at it from an outage mindedness, it's the fridge, maybe a sump pump, maybe some lights and outlets in your Wi Fi. And we said, wait a minute. You can solve this by just going straight to those devices, and making those the smart devices that are capable of protecting themselves. And suddenly, it's no longer a question of calling contractors, getting quotes and all of that. It's a question of getting a beautiful device delivered to your home, and plugging it in.
Justine Reichman: You make it sound so simple. So right now, you have the pre market product. Talk to me about the pre market product. Where are you with this? And what are the next steps with it?
Cole Ashman: Yeah. We will be delivering products later this year to our early customers. We launched with a lot of fanfare South by Southwest in Austin this past March, and the input from customers, market and technology partners has been tremendous. I think we found that we've struck a chord. I think for a long time, people have seen the premium products and said, maybe one day with my dream home. And we're happy that the message of, hey, actually you don't have to wait. You can get this today. And self resolve has really resonated. So we've had interest from almost 50 states at this point, or for pre orders. We're allowing folks to reserve early units on our website. We are working as hard as we can to go through that development process, which, as anyone who's built in space knows, is very safety minded, and there's a lot of scrutiny that you have to go through to make sure this is a reliable thing that's going to last 5 and 10 years. And obviously, be safe for the home and all the rest.
Justine Reichman: As I'm sitting here, I'm envisioning it. It's on top of the fridge or something behind the door. It's something that's easy to access. The minute you lose your power, you can utilize it. It's accessible to most. I mean, it's under $1,000. A few $100, right?
Cole Ashman: So the market price is about the same as a nice pull start generator. It's 1299, so that's the base unit. And you compare that to something like a whole-home battery, which is 25 upwards of $60,000. So we have a lot of work to get it down to the point where every single household can afford it, and we've got plans to do that. But out of the gate, we're excited to, at least bring the entry costs way down to the point where much, much more homes and businesses can manage.
Justine Reichman: So right now, when you go onto the website, you put down what? $99, it secures your spot. Is it something like that?
Cole Ashman: You've got it. So for folks who are already interested and willing to put their money down, it's a $99 refundable deposit to get in on the early orders as we start shipping later this year.
Justine Reichman: It's low risk, absolutely. If we were to look back at years past and see how often the hurricanes come, and how often the earthquakes come, and how often the heat waves come that create power lines to go down, and there's other reasons they can go down. But let's just say we're looking at a variety of these issues, what do we see as the uptick, how many more people is this affecting year over year?
Cole Ashman: I think most folks have probably keyed into the fact that it's going up. Outages are becoming a more common thing that we're dealing with, not only in the US, but abroad. In Spain, several weeks ago, the entire country lost power. It's largely driven by weather events. So there's a strong correlation between those big storms and fires, and the number of people who are losing power every year, that's gone up. I mentioned Katrina, that was 2005 in the entire decade. Of the 2000s, we had about a third of the billion dollar weather disasters that we've had in the last three years. So in the last three years, we've surpassed three fold that entire previous decade. And it's not only fires in California and the West Coast, it's floods, it's storms, it's winter storms, wind storms. Most states are contending with this in some form or another.
Justine Reichman: It's obvious, the need is there. People are gonna need this. We need to make it accessible to people. Don't forget the elderly people that are hooked up to monitors, or hooked up to machines, or the surgeries that are going on, or people that need all sorts of support as they get older, or even just are sick, right? So what an amazing thing you've innovated. When I think about batteries, I am curious about the sustainability of them, and what happens to them afterwards? So can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Cole Ashman: The easiest way for something to end up in a landfill is for it to be outdated in a year or two. The planned obsolescence problem. So step one, you pick batteries that are really designed for ultra long life, and not all lithium ion batteries are created equal. If you've owned a smartphone, you know that after a year or two, the thing doesn't really hold a charge. So that style of battery is really designed for a lot of fast charging and discharging in a short lifetime, and really lightweight. We're using a different chemistry called lithium iron phosphate, LFP, 10 year cycle life. So this is designed to be very long lasting.
On top of that, we built the software to get smarter over time, like your iPhone, so that it doesn't become out of date in three or five years time, as you know that the needs change for homes and businesses. And then once the product has lived its useful life, how are you recovering the materials in those so that we have to dig fewer mines and the rest? And that comes down to good design and modular design, so that disassembly is as easy as putting the thing together. So really, that kind of full end to end design life is something our engineering team is incredibly focused on. And then the expert level answer here too is our view, that if we put batteries more surgically in areas where they can be smarter next, let's say next to your refrigerator instead of in the equipment room or the garage, we can actually more judiciously provide power to that appliance only what it needs and cater to it. Which means the size of the battery pack can actually come down as well. So to provide that same service, say 30 plus hours of backup for an average refrigerator, while that might take a 15 kilowatt hour whole-home battery, if you're also supplying to all kinds of unnecessary energy draws in the home by being really focused on just what's most important to you, and going room by room and appliance by appliance, we can actually lower the total need for batteries created dug out of the ground, and the rest take that stored energy a bit further. So all kinds of different angles here that we can look at that question.
Justine Reichman: So I love the whole beginning to the end. It's very thoughtful. It's thoughtful about the environment. It's thoughtful about the customer. You're making it accessible, you're giving them power, and you're thinking about what you can do with it at the end. So for those customers, though, that even $1,200 is a lot, is there a way to get something subsidized? Or is there a way to work with you? Or do you have a program, let's say, that would help facilitate making it possible for those individuals that might not have what they need to get this?
Cole Ashman: Absolutely. Something we think about a lot. We really want to envision a world where everyone has this protection. No one is literally left in the dark when power outages occur. And of course, the people that are most at risk may not be the ones that have the ability to buy these new types of products. The beautiful thing about what we're building is it's actually infrastructure, and infrastructure grade kind of design. Which means we have all kinds of partnerships in the works with utilities who are talking to us about offering this to their customers as a few extra dollars on their bill to help spread out that cost.
Justine Reichman: They're automatically PG&E, right?
Cole Ashman: Large utilities and small utilities since they see their duty as providing reliable electricity to their customers, and they're working very hard to try and make the power lines and generation catch up with the need. But there are some really innovative teams at those companies that are focused on solutions in the home too. So that's one example financing another great option, and we'll have more to share on that later this year.
Justine Reichman: Whether it's Katrina or it's a hospital, they need food to be able to eat because you can't survive without food, and you need health care, and that includes plugging it in. So you're really solving a problem that is only going to grow in my mind as we see global warming continuing to evolve each year, becoming more and more contributory to all the issues, whether it's flying or power outages.
Cole Ashman: We want to move fast and give people tools to put the power in their hands. And part of moving fast is lowering the cost. The other part is just designing solutions that work for more people. So we talked about the renters in addition to the owners. The story can't be, well, once we build all of the next generation of homes, they'll be smart solar enabled and backup battery capable. We've got to think about, how do we adapt our existing homes and businesses for this new reality that you're describing? And this isn't to say that there's no room for the premium solutions that are professionally installed. Those are great if you can get them. But I think the last 10 years has shown us that it's not quite the accessible mass market product that a lot of us want it to be. And again, that was our motivation in putting this product together.
Justine Reichman: So as you're innovating, because you're trying to solve this problem and make things more accessible, are there other products that you're thinking about innovating down the line to add to this?
Cole Ashman: Absolutely. A lot of people enter the energy product conversation through backup power and resilience, because that's really when it hits you the hardest. But what I found is people are so receptive and interested to see the data in their home. Imagine getting like an Apple watch for your entire home where you can suddenly understand what's contributing to that power bill, and what's being powered by clean energy sources, and solar versus the grid and expensive electricity. It can be a little addicting for some of us. And our view is to build that ecosystem that's very data rich. And once you have these things in your home, they can do a lot more than just backup power. Take the fridge, for example. We can tell you if that refrigerator is on the fritz. We've all had the experience where you open the door and it's making a funny noise, and should I call somebody out? I don't know. How do we make that easier? How do we bring that answer to the forefront? Hey, can we help you call a technician out? This thing's gonna fail in the next 30 days. Or even small things like the door was left open. Once you've got these smart systems in place, they can make your life easier in so many ways. So that's a broad answer. But for us, it looks like more products in our portfolio, more software features that help people understand their energy. And again, it's all about putting you in control, and understanding what's going on.
Justine Reichman: So as a founder that innovated this and built this off your experience at Tesla, what were some of the things, some of the resources, or rather skills that you needed that maybe you didn't have, that you had to surround yourself with? Could you share a little bit about that, and how you brought those folks in?
Cole Ashman: Yeah, absolutely. This founding peeler has been such a story of community and coming together. And I've been just lucky in my career to be surrounded by wonderful mentors and people who are smarter than I am to help through the process. So drawing on that community from whether it's X Tesla span, Apple, Amazon, all these different tech companies, and on the design side, some really, really sharp folks when it comes to how to think about brand design, both consumers and businesses. And I think the lesson here is, never discount a connection. You never know where the person who's going to make the biggest difference on your next thing is going to come from. I'm very grateful to have those folks in my network supporting in one way or another, kind of on the PO mission from advisory business development, to design, app development, to partnerships, and how to think about scaling of businesses from the earliest stages, to making massive impact with larger customers and broader geographies.
Justine Reichman: A little less than a year and a half. So in order to make that happen, to those listeners that are tuning in, to those viewers that are watching and they ask, okay, what do I need to do to make something like that happen?
Cole Ashman: Absolutely. One, and I said it before, the first thing is just get started. Don't be your own biggest barrier, and don't be afraid to learn and fail. I know this advice that a lot of people give, but I think it bears repeating because it's easy to want to shield your idea from the world until you feel that it's perfect. But you're going to learn so much faster if you build something scrappy, get it out there, learn, iterate, and be open to feedback. So number one would be, get started. Number two, if you're building in your domain, you've been working in a space for a while, trust your conviction. It's easy as a corollary to the first one, it's easy to hear a lot of negatives and doubts. And why hasn't this been done before? But I think having your own center of belief guides you forward. And taking on the feedback that you have and assembling it into your mental model is a real skill, and not getting downtrodden in the process. And I think that takes us to number three, which is, surround yourself with people that can help orient the path. People that you trust to give advice, not only in, let's say like a technical area, but also, I've benefited a lot from just general mentorship and career life area as well.
Justine Reichman: Thank you for sharing that. I think that's really helpful. I've been thinking a lot because I get asked questions all the time about, when you're pitching your business, what do you recommend? PowerPoint or this? And my reaction is always like, be authentic. Be genuine. Have the founder there, because people want to invest in founders. So for your experience, I'd love to know how you went about this, and what you found to be most useful?
Cole Ashman: Yeah, it's fun. Again, no secrets. But I think your point about being authentic is ultimately the answer. For some people, they're very visually minded. And spending the time to put together those visuals helps tell the story. For others, they're wordsmiths, and they can tell a story verbally with no problem, and paint that picture. Just don't feel that you have to conform to some rigid way of doing things. Think about it as, how would you describe it to a friend or family?
Justine Reichman: So what role as you're pitching this to people does the impact on the environment play?
Cole Ashman: It's something we think a lot about internally, all the way down to our packaging design. We talked about the cells. But in our specific product category, it's probably not the number one, two or three. We're really proud of the work that we've done to make sure that this product is responsibly designed. But for many people, if they're running a generator in an outage, it lowers down on that need. To your point, they're powering the medical equipment in the fridge, they're skewing fumes, but they're also breathing those fumes. And they're kind of taking these affordances, if you will, on the environmental side already. So just by virtue of having a clean battery, it's a better product for the environment. But more importantly, just a better user experience. You're not outside running an extension cord in the rain, trying to refuel a generator and running this noisy thing, refueling it from electricity most of the time, that's going to be way cleaner to a low efficiency.
Justine Reichman: Well, with that being said, what role does that play in selling it to the consumer online, which is what you're doing right now? Talk to me about the education that's going into this. And I'm curious. Are people curious? Are they asking? Is this not even part of the conversation? They just really want to solve a problem.
Cole Ashman: A little bit of both. I think that's the fun part about creating a new market. You have people coming in with different levels of knowledge. So some of our early customers may even own a power wall or a whole home generator system, and they're used to thinking about all kinds of different power questions for their home. So they know exactly what they're looking for in a very pointed question. On the other hand, because this product is so accessible, we're talking to folks who may not be tech native and have a lot of basic questions just around, how does it work? Okay, so I plug it in, then what? What kind of information do I get? How does it contemplate security and safety, and all of these things? So we're kind of seeing it from all angles, and it's been a really fun thing to put together the simple answers for all of these questions. Because again, we want to provide all the details that people need to make the purchase decision, understand the product and be excited. But there's always a balance between giving the full engineering answer. And giving the human answer.
Justine Reichman: I think it's important that it gets people thinking, and it's important for us to tell them what you've done so that they can make the best decision for themselves.
Cole Ashman: Absolutely. And this discovery process involves a lot of learning. And most of us, let's be honest, don't think about energy and electricity on a day to day basis. We're not saying that everyone needs to. But in a world where outages, high bills and the rest to the extent that you want to engage, you can start to make an impact on those things. You can lower your bills. You can protect your family. And we want to give people understandable, digestible answers and product solutions that can help them get started. Because, again, that the default way of building with these expensive contractors led to a $20,000 system, the knowledge gap there, it's incredibly overwhelming. So in making this battery system that we're building more modular and accessible, plug and play, we're kind of adapting the messaging to make it also more digestible and modular, kind of learn as you go.
Justine Reichman: So are we looking at this on an app or something?
Cole Ashman: There's a screen on the device. But we went even further than that, because we understand that there's kind of app fatigue in the smart home space. For some folks, the app is great. For others, they may want to engage with it only occasionally. So we have done our best to make the information as accessible as possible. It also connects into other smart home systems, whether it's Google Home. Alexa, you name it.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Cole, thank you so much. If our guests that are tuning in via YouTube or our podcast want to learn more, what is the best place to go? How can they find out more? Possibly even pre register for their battery.
Cole Ashman: The easiest way is our website. So it's www.pila.energy. You can also go to pilaenergy.com. We post regular updates on our blog, on our website. And they can also find us on socials, on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram as Pila Energy.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. Cole, thank you so much. I want to thank our guests who tuned in today. I want to thank those listeners, because we've got such a great community. And without this community, who are we talking to? So really, it's built up of amazing guests like yourself and our wonderful listeners. So I want to just take a moment and thank you both, Cole and our listeners, for joining me today.
Cole Ashman: Thank you very much.
Justine Reichman: It's my pleasure. And for those that maybe want to check out our video cast because you're listening to the podcast, don't forget our channel on YouTube is at Essential Ingredients. And for those that want to listen to it on the podcast because they watch it on YouTube, it's Essential Ingredients with Justine, anywhere you listen to your podcast.
