This week, we are bringing you a mini-series about the key differentiators that set the PowerBloc apart from mainstream home battery systems (a.k.a. “garage art”).  To kick things off, let’s focus on the core of our value proposition: Independence.

Before you do your propeller head and take flight and delight in Direct Current (DC) grid technology, we must ground you with some “power” politics: Europeans and Americans cannot agree. The American EMerge Alliance attempts to make 380 V DC the new standard, while Europe’s CurrentOS Foundation advocates 350 V DC. 

The PowerBloc is powerful. It is not merely a piece of hardware but a smart independent power system. DIYA is its stunningly beautiful user interface. One user interface (“UI”) designer noted that “DIYA is lightyears ahead of the competition.”

“The inhabitants of planet Earth are quietly conducting a gigantic environmental experiment,” wrote Wallace S. Broecker, then at Columbia University, in an article, “Unpleasant Surprises in the Greenhouse”, in the science magazine Nature in 1987. He continued: “We play Russian roulette with climate [and] no one knows what lies in the active chamber of the gun.”

I was always an engineer at heart. As a teenager, I built and repaired model trains, all sorts of radio-controlled vehicles, mopeds, and cars. I was a regular at the local hardware store and for years, my fingernails were constantly black from engine oil.