Electriq Power

What was going on.Electriq Power sold home batteries and grid services. To raise the capital it needed, it had to show investors a fleet of home batteries responding to storms, utility requests and prices as one system. It had a pitch deck. I was engaged through Accella to lead the client relationship and design the operator console.

What I found.Investors had seen decks. What they hadn’t seen was the platform making a decision. So the console had to run every scenario end to end, with simulated data, as working software.

What I did.Four modules, each a full process. Storm response: a landfall alert, the system’s recommendation to charge the batteries in its path, the operator’s call to move homes into resilience mode, the customer notifications, and the reinstatement when it’s safe. Utility demand response: a request for capacity in a window, the forecast of what’ll be available, the operator’s release of it, and the reconciliation of delivered against requested. Fleet health and price forecasting behind both. In every module the system recommends and a person decides, and the design says which is which.

What came out of it.The console the company used in its investor process. It announced its public listing later that year and went public in 2023. It closed in 2024. The design pattern outlived it, and it’s the one I still use: the machine proposes, the operator disposes, and the record shows both.

What I took from it.Working software beats a deck with investors for the same reason it beats one with operations teams. People believe what they can see run.