Grid Triage

Grid Triage A3 poster

Inspiration

In January 2025, SCE cut power to 363,196 LA accounts during wildfire shutoffs, including 11,740 Medical Baseline customers who depend on powered medical devices. In Texas in 2021, more than two dozen people died after losing power to medical equipment. The home batteries that could have protected them were already installed, but blackouts cut by neighborhood, not by need.

What it does

Grid Triage is software on top of a home-battery fleet (like Base Power's). On a normal day it shifts power use to cheap hours and saves money. In a crisis it ranks homes by need (verified medical, vulnerable, standard), steps homes down a 6-step ladder from comfort to essentials, and keeps medical homes powered longest. Each battery stores its own "standing orders," so the system keeps working when the internet is cut. The same engine runs military base zones.

How we built it

A browser-based simulation of 40synthetic LA homes plus a dispatcher console, with scenario buttons for a calm day, red flag warning, grid down, and cut the cloud.

Challenges

Making the logic honest: batteries buy time, not forever, so we promise priority, never guaranteed power. We also had to respect grid-safety, fire-code, and health-privacy rules.

What we learned

Most battery fleets today are optimized for grid revenue, not for people, and the hard parts are medical verification and working without communications.