Startups Are Sneaking the Grid's Next Big Battery Into Stoves and E-Bikes

In New York City, installing a big grid battery means cutting through what MIT Technology Review describes as a notoriously tough tangle of regulations. So a crop of startups has stopped trying — instead, they're hiding the grid's next storage fleet inside appliances, e-bikes, and food carts.

Small batteries, big aggregate

The logic is simple: small batteries that plug in like appliances don't trigger grid upgrades or long permitting fights. PopWheels, which built a battery-swapping network for delivery e-bike riders, operates about 50 swap cabinets and 2,500 batteries across New York City, cofounder David Hammer said at a New York Climate Week event on September 24. The company has started supplying batteries to food cart operators as a replacement for gas generators — roughly four batteries provide five kilowatt-hours, enough for about a day's operation for many carts, according to the report.

Copper is building induction stoves with integrated batteries that keep cooking during outages and can help homeowners avoid expensive electrical upgrades, since the battery supplies some of the power while the stove runs. "We're not just selling a battery for resilience — we're selling it for cost savings," cofounder and CEO Sam Calisch said at the event.

Paying customers to flex

Others are turning the batteries into a two-way business. Every Electric sells plug-in batteries for air-conditioning units and pays customers to reduce use during high-stress periods. David Energy uses a similar model aimed at businesses like laundromats, parking garages, and gyms. David Energy cofounder and CEO James McGinniss called the shift toward distributed batteries "the biggest thing to happen in the power grid sector in the last 20 years."

The math is compelling at scale: if every stove shipped in the U.S. carried a battery, Calisch said, it would add up to tens of gigawatts of power — capacity that could be aggregated and tapped when the grid is stressed.

No substitute for big storage

There's a limit to the thesis. As the report notes, large installations will still do the crucial work of backing up intermittent wind and solar as electricity demand climbs. The distributed horde is a complement, not a replacement — but in congested cities like New York, where avoiding a summer blackout matters more than the perfect resource mix, every plugged-in stove helps.

Written by the BidAsk Newsroom. Based on reporting from the sources below.