In the middle of a discussion with my coworkers about the lowest price available on the TX Power to Choose website and Base prices, I noticed a slightly lower Base cost after my initial installation. It was 13.1; now it's showing 12.9. It's nothing in the end, but I'm curious about the adjustment.
Yesterday Base did the initial installation and now I waiting for the 40kw battery. They left a plastic base. I’m living in an area prone to tornadoes and hurricanes, I wonder if a “loose” battery is a hazard. I know it is very heavy but the last tornado that passed in my community made a truck fly hehe
Also, how long it usually takes to get a scheduled battery install date?
Strange…. In this crazy heat…. My base app says that it hasn’t used any battery for at least a week. Anyone else seeing the same thing? I know the grid has said it has enough reserves but in the afternoon there must be a pricing differential that would make sending the power to the grid.
Hi everyone, we got our Base Core battery installed this morning. It's their new 40 kWh battery. Ever since this was installed, my Base app's home energy section has not been syncing. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Customer care says it might take "days" to sync, which seems bizarre!
But overall, I am pretty excited about this super low-cost battery backup, amidst all the craziness we are seeing in the Chicagoland area. If you want to sign up for Base Power, feel free to use my referral code. We both will be pretty incentivized:
If anyone experiences power outage & batteries kick in, let us know how it goes please. I’m in DFW & many are reporting power flickers. It’s going to be a long hot week. Thx.
I was looking at base power, but the math isn’t mathing for me. Our house consumes about 1,000kw/h per month.
On Powertochoose today you can get a 36 month plan for around 11.5c, compared to base at 13.5c (extra $20/mth). Plus a $20/mth membership fee. So basically $480/yr + $700 upfront buys you protection from outages? Seems kind of expensive for a relatively infrequent occurrence. Am I missing something?
Edit: Got it. I guess I’m lucky that I haven’t really dealt with any significant outages, maybe one per year so so. Makes a lot more sense when dealing with more frequent outages
I have base battery now with no solar. If I purchased a solar setup and hooked to my battery. What happens in these scenarios?
I generate more kw that I am consuming - does base purchase all the excess
If the solar charges the battery do I get credits for this that offset anything used from the battery?
If grid is down will solar charge the battery and/or will it pass thru to the house?
If I generate less kw than consuming I assume this reduces my overall bill?
Has anyone installed around 4kw of solar, what was the cost? What all is needed besides panels?
I submitted the pictures and survey and they said my meter was too old... its the newest electrical infrastructure item I have. Base told me to contact my supplier (comed) and get my meter replaced. comed replaced it in 2021. It seems as though they would just not prefer to do business with me?
So I had dealt with Base Power early in 2025 and went through the whole process to get the battery and system set up. At the last minute they pulled the plug because of our area was rezoned as a flood area. They advised they were working on a new battery to solve this issue in many instances and would be back in touch. Now jump to August 2026 over 1 1/2 years later, after me trying to contact them multiple times with no luck. I get a message saying they were basically purging me from their system due to my lack of follow-up and not sending proper information. I called them on this, and then I finally got a Base person to contact me. Well it ended up not going well. The guy was nice but just trying to sell me on the wonders of Base. I advised him I was aware of who they were and our prior dealings. He looked it up and said ok I have reactivated you into the system and if I was still interested. I said yes if someone can tell me if the new Core Battery would be available in my area. He said I would need to resubmit everything again, so ok I went along with it. I started to fill out all the info, etc and then hit a segment in the process where it says I am switching my energy provider to BASE moving forward. I halted the process and tried to contact the Base Representative again and advise them of this and that I would not be switching unless they could tell me if the battery could be installed. If not then I would not be switching providers. Now of course they are ghosting me and won't respond to messages. This provider switch was not in place in original dealings until after the installation.
Are you kidding me? Absolutely not, this is an unacceptable response. I was told this won't happen for a non-outage. Battery grid support is how THEY make money, it should not be inconveniencing me or causing potential damage to my property.
Feedback from the group here?
Hello to all my fellow Illinois Base users. I finally got to really put my system to the test today. After the severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings in Plainfield, my power was “out” for about 6 hours before finally being restored. I have a single 25kWh battery in a rather larger house and when the electricity came back on we still had about 66% battery life left.
For a a house that is ~4000 sq ft, I really can’t complain about how well it did. No disruptions and I was the only one in the neighborhood with power during that time. Even the small hospital down the street was rationing power and only really had the ER up and running. We could still use Internet and watch TV and really do whatever we wanted (with a slight increase in AC temp to keep the batteries going longer).
I have been told that I will be upgraded to the new 40kWh battery in the fall, so I am sure that will do even better. I also plan to grab a portable tri-fuel generator to handle longer outages. This has been the longest outage we have had since moving in to our house in 2022.
If you are in Illinois and still on the fence, I strongly suggest you get the system while the deal is ongoing ($95 install, 25% savings). And of course, use my referral so we can both get $250:
Reached out to base last week to see what my options are when it comes to changing out my 25kwh with a $1,000 gen port set to their new 40kwh offerng.
The rep offered a deinstallion fee/option of $500 to install the new one. When I accepted, the rep came back and said they checked with some support team and stated this change out simply isn’t possible for existing customers.
Anyone else receive similar feedback / ask about this?
Is this just the way Base is? Every appointment keeps getting moved every time. Ironically they moved an appointment 3 weeks out and the electrician showed up on the original day. Now was supposed to have a battery get installed and they’re moving it again late in the day on the day of install.
What’s going on with this company how is scheduling this hard
I opened the Base app this morning, and it says the battery isn’t currently sending data. I can’t see live status or any information on the app.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Interested in signing up, but what concerns me is what happens after the promo ends. Can it end up costing more per month than if you just had grid power? Im in Illinois.
Has anyone tried this growatt integration. It seems to be in the standard repository now.
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/growatt_server/
I have it installed but can't seem to find grid status.
BASE Power started off issuing me credit for the early termination of my previous contract, but the rest has come from referrals.
Here's a screen capture of my billing summary from the BASE Power dashboard. I find it interesting that no monthly service charge shows on any of the bills.
Sincerely hoping BASE will revise the dashboard to add a way to track referrals. I have received 6 or 7 notifications by text that someone used my referral link to sign up.
Thing is, there's no way to know if the people who used the link ended up with an install.
Seems like the majority of those using a link WOULD follow through with an install because they have to put up $50 as a deposit. I think that's enough to narrow it down to people who are seriously interested.
Sometimes an install can't go through for various reasons. If the house is in an area with a history of flooding, if there's not sufficient space to put in a battery, if the breaker box and meter configuration don't meet requirements, etc.
I've messaged and emailed BASE Power support asking them to provide a way to keep track of referrals and the AI bot always makes the right noises, but until they do it, I have little faith they actually will.
While I'm griping, I also have complained that we should have a way to know the state of charge of our batteries, and not just an estimated amount of time we'll have if an outage happens, given the current use and battery status.
Yeah, the batteries and equipment belong to BASE Power, but we're making an investment in the company and allowing them to use our space and tie into our power systems. They should give us an accurate display of state of charge.
Hi, I've only learned about Base Power recently and would like to understand the value proposition better by asking actual users why they purchased and were willing to pay for the system.
On their website they say they bring more 1) affordable, and 2) reliable energy. The reliability part is easy to understand given that batteries obviously can act as buffers that kick in in times of emergency. I also understand that some markets experience frequent power interruptions and severe weather that results in such interruptions every now and then.
What I'd like to understand better is the affordability proposition. Is that general or also related to eliminating costs that would otherwise be incurred due to exactly the same reliability issues with the status quo in their target markets? Asked differently, if someone lived in a market where they didn't have to deal with these frequent power interruptions, as their climate doesn't see storms or severe summers, and power from the utilities is very stable and if power goes out it's like once a year. Would people in such markets still benefit from installing something like Base?
Today, I’m introducing a new tool on Clear Energy Facts. It is called the Free Nights Calculator.
It is currently in beta, but you can now test a Free Nights plan in advance to see if it can beat the fixed-rate plans available in the market.
The tool is free. You do not need to share your email, phone number, or any personal contact information. Simply download your Smart Meter Texas data, upload it to the calculator, and compare a Free Nights plan against fixed-rate plans.
Here are a few situations where this can help:
Please feel free to use it, test it, and mention or comment on anything you would like to add or remove. There are still some items to improve, but I’m rolling it out to the public so people can start testing it and giving feedback.
I just got my first Base Power bill after my battery installation, and I noticed there's no $29 monthly battery subscription fee anywhere on the bill. Instead, I received about $28.67 in battery adjustment credits. Is this normal for the first bill? Does the $29 fee start later, get billed separately, or is it included some other way? Curious if others had the same experience.
