How long does the battery take to kick-in during an outage? Do I have to do anything?

Your battery should turn on automatically within a second of a power outage. Most Base members won’t even notice the transition!

If your battery does not automatically kick-in as it should, this usually means high-energy appliances are using too much power. Your home must be using 11 kW or less for the battery to turn on. If high-draw devices like electric heaters push usage higher, you'll need to reduce usage before the battery can turn on. The system will automatically try to restart three times.

If it still doesn’t work after 3 automatic restarts, you'll need to cut energy use further. Once you've reduced usage, you can restart the battery using the Base Power mobile app.

If you have 2 batteries, once you decrease usage under 11 kW and the battery turns on, wait 5 minutes and then you can increase usage to 22 kW at that time. That said, we don't recommend using 22 kW as it will drain your battery more quickly.