Base Power’s response to my PUCT complaint: Draining to 20% overnight is “working as described” and backups aren’t guaranteed
I wanted to share my direct experience as an early Base Power customer in Texas, specifically regarding how they handle serious consumer concerns.
After months of dealing with unresolved operational and other issues, I submitted a formal notice and complaint to the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT). Base Power’s official written response from Member Experience was a flat refusal to address any substantive points, relying entirely on boilerplate clauses from their signup clickwrap agreement. Read "The battery agreement". You check a box to agree and click a link to view the agreement right before submitting your $50 refundable deposit online, well before you know if your home even qualifies or is compatible with their battery and as in my case, months before the actual install date.
Here are the key takeaways every Texas homeowner should know before signing:
- A drained battery routinely sits drained for 10–12 hours most days before Base uses the grid to recharge:
Base Power routinely discharges the battery down to a 20% reserve during afternoon and evening grid-balancing events, leaving it drained overnight. In practice, your home’s backup power sits near empty for roughly half of every 24-hour cycle—adding up to nearly 180 full days a year of minimal protection.. When I raised the safety and blackout risk of leaving a home with barely an hour of normal backup during peak outage hours, their written response was:
"A battery resting near 20% overnight is the system working as described.
- Disclaimer of Actual Backup Reliability:
Despite marketing home resiliency, their formal response explicitly cited their battery agreement to remind me that the battery:
"...cannot be relied on to provide Energy or backup power for any health-related reasons or other critical human needs and services at the Property during a power outage, or otherwise."
Their recommendation? Buy a dedicated secondary backup source.
- PUCT Escalation Stance:
When given the opportunity to remediate before state filing, their response was an absolute refusal:
"We're not able to offer reimbursement, a hardware upgrade, or a change to the minimum charge level. You're always free to file a complaint with the PUCT, and if you do, we'll provide them with this same information above and the agreement."
If you are evaluating Base Power based on their venture capital hype or promises of seamless blackout protection, understand that behind the marketing is an adhesion contract where they profit off your capacity and disclaim responsibility when the grid actually goes down.
(Documentation and correspondence redacted for privacy.)