energy-independence
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The Generator You Can Run in the Bedroom
A father-and-son engineering team wants to replace the gas generator with a box that makes hydrogen from powder and water - quiet enough to sit next to a CPAP machine.
The DJI Battery Guys Who Turned a $12M Kickstarter Into a Home Energy Company
A team of ex-DJI battery engineers used Kickstarter as a factory floor, turned camping gear into home power, and built a billion-dollar clean-energy company one power outage at a time.
Base Power Company
Base Power is an Austin-based energy company that installs large-capacity home batteries and sells electricity to homeowners as a licensed Texas retail electric provider. Founded in 2023 by Zach Dell and Justin Lopas, it pairs whole-home backup with low fixed rates, using its growing fleet of distributed batteries as a virtual power plant that charges when power is cheap and discharges when the grid is strained. The company raised a $1 billion Series C in October 2025 at a $4 billion valuation and is building its own battery factory in Austin to scale nationally.
Leitnium (Formerly YouSolar)
Leitnium, formerly YouSolar, is a Santa Clara-based clean-energy hardware company building the PowerBloc, a modular solar-plus-battery nanogrid that runs on a constant 400-volt DC architecture. Founded in 2010 by physicist Dr. Arnold Leitner, the company sells a plug-and-play private power plant that integrates solar panels, lithium-ion batteries, and optional grid or generator inputs into one intelligent, scalable system. The pitch is simple: give a home or small business its own always-on grid, so the lights never flicker even when the utility goes dark.