Dive Brief:

• California startup Orison has unveiled a line of home battery products that require no installation, have a lower price point than Tesla's recently-announced residential products and can keep a home's lights on through the night in the event of an outage.
• The Orison "Tower" and "Panel" resemble a lamp and a picture frame, weigh approximately 40 pounds and have a capacity of 2 kWh. Company officials say the devices will have built-in demand managment functions.
• The tower will sell for approximaely $2,000 and the panel for $1,600. Expansions could allow a customer to have 8 kWh of storage for $4,900.

Dive Insight:

It was only in May that Tesla Chairman and CEO Elon Musk unveiled residential storage options that seemed poised to revamp home energy markets. The PowerWall will come in two sizes, with a 7 kWh system available for $3,000.

But that cost didn't include installation, and could mean homeowners need permits and contractors to have the systems built into their homes. What if there was an easier way?

Enter Orison, which last month showed off its own line of battery products. Sleekly-designed, they are light enough to order via mail and are simply plugged into a standard outlet. With capacity ranges from 2 kWh to 8 kWh, they feature price points that are likely below Tesla's own once installation is factored into the cost.

Orison CEO Eric Clifton told The San Diego Union-Tribune that the new products are designed to make storage a consumer product.

"The way we look at it, we are the Nest of the energy industry," he said, referring to the smart thermostats owned by Google.

And the battery seems to offer a built-in demand management function. According to Orison’s web site, its "load shift technology stores electricity when utility rates are low and powers your home when rates are high. You’ll conserve energy and pay a significantly lower energy bill over time."

"In the basic configuration, the system would provide power to those appliances during the super-peak time," Clifton, recently told GizMag. "Once you better understand your energy budget, you could run off the storage all day and only charge at night. We do foresee this becoming a common desired occurrence. Having this type of capability would allow customers to really budget."

Production of Tesla's storage products is underway at the company's California facility, and is expected to switch over to the Gigafactory next year in Nevada. The company has already taken reservations for more than $1 billion of its Powerwall and Powerpack batteries.

While a production date for the first Orison batteries has not yet been reported, it's clear they have a long way to go to challenge the scale of Tesla's gigafactory now under construction. GizMag reports the company will soon launch a kickstarter campaign to provide pre-order savings and other incentives to early adopters. The company released a video teaser in anticipation of that campaign early last month.