It’s basically a portable power station with a difference. There are a lot of portable power stations on the show floors of CES 2025, but this one is designed to disappear seamlessly behind your refrigerator or onto a wall. Because the BioLite backup battery isn’t built to be portable.
The idea behind the BioLite battery is to provide a simple way to back up key parts of your home without relying on the complicated and expensive processes of installing a big whole-home battery.
These batteries aren’t built to be moved around like the typical power station, but that means it’s very easy to imagine how to put them to use.
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Small but powerful
The BioLite Core battery packs 1.5kWh of storage capacity in a unit that also includes an inverter, but the BioLite Complete package also comes with a second unit, the same size and shape, with another 1.5 kWh of storage. That total of 3 kWh is important — it’s the minimum size for a home battery to qualify for the 30% federal tax credit. The Core has a retail price of $1,999, while the Complete retails for $2,999 — or $2,099 after the credit.
If you want more than 3 kWh, you can add more battery modules — up to 10.5 kWh.
The battery units themselves are slim — just 2.8 inches wide — and are flat, at 13 inches by 29 inches. Contrast that with the usual blocky portable power stations that are built to be hauled around with you on camping trips or elsewhere. A BioLite module is designed to hide in the nooks and crannies of your home, like the space behind or above your fridge or mounted flat on an out-of-the-way wall.
Easy to connect and install
The BioLite batteries can connect to a standard 120-volt outlet without an electrician’s help because they don’t integrate with your home’s electrical panel or broader electrical system. Instead, they work like a battery-connected power strip or a big uninterruptible power supply. You plug the BioLite into the outlet so it can charge from the wall, and you plug your refrigerator or whatever else you want to back up into the BioLite or its connected power strip.
Home battery systems that are capable of backing up your entire home have to connect behind the electrical panel, and that kind of work is typically not suited for DIY. A battery system that can push power back to the grid would likely require permitting with your power company. Because the BioLite doesn’t do any of that, you don’t have to pay the thousands of dollars that you’d expect to pay a battery installer or electrician.
The system works similarly to an uninterruptible power supply or UPS, but it’s worth noting the switchover time is not as instantaneous as it is with a UPS. Your fridge probably won’t notice the change from grid power to backup power when the lights go out, but a desktop computer might restart.
More than just backup power
BioLite reps told me the batteries can do more than just keep your refrigerator running when the power goes out. Like truly portable power stations, they can be charged via solar panels, and the company plans to have those ready for release this year as well. That can keep your appliances on even longer than the dozens of hours one of these systems can run a refrigerator.
Another tool is that the batteries can be used to shift your energy usage around expensive time-of-use utility rates. You can run your appliances off of the battery when electricity is most expensive and recharge the battery at times when it’s cheapest. These settings are handled in the app.
BioLite expects to ship the batteries later this year, but you can reserve a unit now.
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