Planning for a Power Outage: Two Prototypes From the AITX x Base Power Hackathon
Spent last weekend at the AITX Hackathon with Base Power thinking about a very practical problem: when the power goes out, how do you quickly figure out what you can keep running?
My team built two prototypes around that question.
The first was a phone-based home power planner. You could scan appliances around the house from a refrigerator or microwave to important medical equipment and get a rough sense of how long a Base Power battery could support them. We also added a breaker panel feature: upload a photo of your panel and get a clearer picture of which circuits might make sense to keep on or shut off during an outage.
The second was a Texas utility-risk map. It brings together utility and county-level outage information with weather and hazard exposure flooding, tornadoes, hurricanes, surges, and more to make it easier to see where the grid may be under the most pressure. We used sources including ERCOT and Texas county/outage data.
The part I keep coming back to is that backup power is only one piece of resilience. People also need a way to understand their options when things get stressful.
Big thanks to the organizers, Base Power, and everyone who built with us. A good weekend of shipping, learning, and asking better questions.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.
