Oh, bother. Where art thou? Base Power
I first wrote about Base Powerback in May 2024. Inspired by Doug Lewin’s Energy Capital podcast, I signed up for the companies mailing list, in the hope of learning when they Austin-based company would be offering service in Houston. In fact, I’ve signed up twice!
We’ve received literally nothing from the company. Putting our address into a page on their web site they report “Great news! Base is coming to Houston soon! We’ll be installing in your area later this year.”
When I first signed up the web site was quite spartan. It’s now been fleshed out with the details of the offer, which start as follows:
- A 25 kWh battery
- $695 installation fee
- $19/month membership fee
- Energy rate of 9 cents/kWh + T&D
- Over a 36 month contract
You can opt to have generator inlet installed for an extra $1k. That seems a bit high, but not outrageously so.
You can also opt to have two battery units installed, for a total of 50 kWh of on-site backup.
I appreciate the way they stipulate the utility of the battery in the backup role. They quote a single 25 kWh battery as providing 10 – 15 hours of backup for an average Texas home. Given what we know about our usage pattern, this seems possible.
Ours is not likely an “average” Texas home. At just 1560 square feet, it’s on the small side. It’s also over 100 years old, so not in any way energy efficient. We’re working on that…slowly.
Assume the utility power went out at midnight. Yesterday (July 20, 2025) was quite hot, and our home used 74 kWh in total. The load pattern (pictured above) is weighted into the PM hours. If we were running on the Base Power system from midnight the battery alone would have sustained us until about noon.
This is actually quite attractive. It does not in any way replace a backup generator. It could work well in tandem with a backup generator. In a long term outage, the generator can charge the battery during the day. That would allow you to not run the generator overnight. That’s both easier on the generator and quieter during sleeping hours.
Of course, in a multi-day power outage our neighbors are unlikely to have such a carefully considered solution. So, generators of various sorts will definitely be heard.
Taking a look at the rates, they seem attractive. We’re currently with CleanSky Energy in a 7 month contract at 11.274¢ per kWh + $4.9 per bill month and 4.2392¢ per kWh. The short contract is an attempt to get the renewal to occur at a time of year when rates are typically lower.
A 36 month contract at 9¢ + T&D would be an improvement. I’ll need to do that math to work out the impact of their installation cost and monthly membership fees.
I also need to figure out how large the battery is, and if it’s practical to install one in our yard. Back when we were considering a Generac unit this was serious concern. There was no way to locate it near the electrical service, which meant lots of trenching and buried pipe and wire driving up the cost of the installation.