Depending on where you live in the US, electrical outages can be anything from a rare occurrence to near certainty. While some only last a few minutes or hours, longer ones can end up spoiling everything in your fridge and lead to an uncomfortable day or two with no air-conditioning or fans. Backup by BioLite is a new home backup battery launched by electronics company BioLite that makes it easy to install your own redundancy before the next storm or power outage.
The solution provides up to a claimed 60 hours of backup and is meant to power a homeowner’s most important devices (like a refrigerator, fans, computers, etc.) instead of backing up the entire house.
The concept works like a modern take on a UPS, or uninterrupted power supply. To put it simply, it’s a big LiFePO4 battery in a sleek-looking shell that charges itself from the grid in your home and then feeds that power back out to your most important devices when it senses that the power has gone out.
There are multiple versions of the product that offer different capacities. The 3 kWh Backup Complete is the full monty, and it includes both the main 1.5 kWh Core unit and a 1.5 kWh Extend panel to add even more energy storage. Alternatively, a 1.5 kWh Core unit can be run independently or connected to up to five more Extend panels for the largest energy storage capacity.
The system can output 1,800W continuously and surges up to 3,000W peak.
You can get a better idea of how it works in the overview video below.
One of the main advantages of the system isn’t just its lower cost, but also the ability to be installed by the homeowner instead of needing an electrician to wire it into the house. The device simply plugs into a wall outlet and runs independently of the house, meaning it doesn’t need to be tied into the home’s grid.
“Traditional home backup power typically costs upwards of $15,000 and can take months of coordination with contractors and electricians to install,” shares CEO and Co-Founder, Jonathan Cedar. He continues, “Backup by BioLite offers homeowners and renters alike a more affordable alternative that they can install themselves in under an hour and build resiliency back into their home.”
Compared to more expensive systems, the promotional pre-order prices for BioLite’s 1.5 kWh and 3 kWh systems start at US $1,299 and $1,999, respectively.
First, to address the Kickstarter-shaped elephant in the room. My regular readers will know that I rarely cover Kickstarters or other crowdfunding campaigns, and only make an exception under one of two cases. Either I’ve been able to test the product myself in advance, or it’s coming from a well-established company with a good standing record for delivering products. In this case, it’s the second. I’ve tested several products from BioLite before, and the company has a long reputation in the energy storage and electronics industry. This is also the company’s fifth Kickstarter campaign, with the last four all going quite well.
This isn’t some fly-by-night startup trying to raise the cash to make their oddball idea a reality; this is a company that knows how to build electronics and has been doing it for a while.
That being said, crowdfunding inherently always comes with risks (even when it’s being leveraged largely for marketing purposes), and there’s no guarantee these things will ever get delivered, so proceed accordingly.
Even so, I can absolutely see the need for a product like this. Whole-home backup systems are great, but most people don’t need everything in their home to be powered. In the case of a sudden storm or other outages that last for a day or two, just being able to prevent all the things in your fridge from spoiling is a nice benefit, as well as being able to charge up your phones or run some cooling fans. So I can definitely see the benefit of a simple, easy-to-install system like this.
Sure, it’s largely a modern repacking of a conventional UPS, but it’s a pretty slickly done repackaging that looks like it benefits from BioLite’s experience and brand reputation.
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U.S. President Donald Trump walks as workers react at U.S. Steel Corporation–Irvin Works in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, U.S., May 30, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
U.S. Steel shares jumped on Monday after President Donald Trump approved its controversial merger with Japan’s Nippon Steel.
U.S. Steel shares were last up about 5% in premarket trading.
Trump issued an executive order on Friday that allowed U.S. Steel and Nippon to finalize their merger so long as they signed a national security agreement with the U.S. government. The companies said they signed the agreement with the government, completing the final hurdle for the deal.
U.S. Steel said the national security agreement includes a golden share for the U.S .government, without specifying what powers the government would wield with its share. Trump said on Thursday that the golden share gives the U.S. president “total control.”
Typically, golden shares allow the holder veto power over important decisions the company makes. Pennsylvania Sen. Dave McCormick told CNBC in May that the golden share will give the U.S. government control of several board seats and ensure production levels aren’t cut.
Trump has avoided calling the transaction a merger, describing the deal instead as a “partnership.” U.S. Steel confirmed in a regulatory filing Monday that the company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Steel North America.
“All regulatory approvals required for the completion of the Transaction have been received,” U.S. Steel said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. “The Transaction remains subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, and is expected to be completed promptly.”
Trails of Iranian ballistic missiles light up the night sky as seen from Gaza City during renewed missile strikes launched by Iran in retaliation against Israel on June 15, 2025.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Tehran will “pay the price” for its fresh missile onslaught against Israel, the Jewish state’s defense minister warned Monday, as markets braced for a fourth day of ramped-up conflict between the regional powers.
Fire exchanges have continued since Israel’s Friday attack against Iran, with Iranian media reporting Tehran’s latest strikes hit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, home to a major refinery. CNBC has reached out to operator Bazan for comment on the state of operations at the Haifa plant, amid reports of damage to Israel’s energy infrastructure.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said overnight it deployed “innovative methods” that “disrupted the enemy’s multi-layered defense systems, to the point that the Zionist air defense systems engaged in targeting each other,” according to a statement obtained by NBC News.
Israel has widely depended on its highly efficient Iron Dome missile defense system to fend off attacks throughout regional conflicts — but even it can be overwhelmed if a large number of projectiles are fired.
The fresh hostilities are front-of-mind for investors, who have been weighing the odds of further escalation in the conflict and spillover into the broader oil-rich Middle East, amid concerns over crude supplies and the key shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Oil prices retained the gains of recent days and at 09:19 a.m. London time, Ice Brent futures with August delivery were trading at $73.81 per barrel, down 0.57% from the previous trading session. The Nymex WTI contract with July expiry was at $72.7 per barrel, 0.38% lower.
Elsewhere, however, markets showed initial signs of shrugging off the latest hostilities early on Monday.
Spot prices for key safe-haven asset gold retreated early morning, down 0.42% to $3,417.83 per ounce after nearly notching a two-year-high earlier in the session, with U.S. gold futures also down 0.65% to $ 3,430.5
Tel Aviv share indices pointed higher, with the blue-chip TA-35 up 0.99% and the wider TA-125 up 1.33%.
Luis Costa, global head of EM sovereign credit at Citigroup Global Markets, signaled the muted reaction could be, in part, attributed to hopes of a brisk resolution to the conflict.
“So markets are obviously, you know, bearing in mind all potential scenarios. There are obviously potentially very bad scenarios in this story,” he told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Monday. “But there is still a way out in terms of, you know, a faster resolution and bringing Iran to the table, or a short continuation here, of a very surgical and intense strike by the Israeli army.”
U.S. response in focus
As of Monday morning, Israel’s national emergency service Magen David Adom reported four dead and 87 injured following rocket strikes at four sites in “central Israel,” reporting collapsed buildings, fire and people trapped under debris.
Accusing Tehran of targeting civilians in Israel to prevent the Israel Defense Forces from “continuing the attack that is collapsing its capabilities,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, a close longtime ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a Google-translated social media update that “the residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon.”
The IDF on Sunday said it had in turn “completed a wide-scale wave of strikes on numerous weapon production sites belonging to the Quds Force, the IRGC and the Iranian military, in Tehran.”
CNBC could not independently verify developments on the ground.
The U.S.’ response is now in focus, given its close support and arms provision to Israel, the unexpected cancellation of Washington’s latest nuclear deal talks with Iran, and President Donald Trump’s historically hard-hitting stance against Tehran during his first term.
Trump, who has been pushing Iran for a deal over its nuclear program, has weighed in on the conflict, opposing an Israeli proposal to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to NBC News.
Discussions about the conflict are expected to take place during the ongoing meeting of the G7, encapsulating Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., along with the European Union.
— CNBC’s Katrina Bishop contributed to this report.
A Tesla Model 3 got stuck on a train track and was hit, albeit slightly, by a train in Sinking Spring, PA. The driver claimed it was in “self-driving mode.”
According to the fire alerts in Berks County, a Tesla Model 3 drove around a train track barrier near South Hull Street and Columbia Avenue and got stuck in the tracks.
The driver was able to exit the vehicle, but a train hit the car, reportedly snapping off the side mirror.
The fire commissioner ordered to stop all train traffic as the emergency services worked to get the Model 3 off the tracks using a crane.
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Spitlers Garage & Towing, performed the recovery and shared a few pictures on Facebook:
The Tesla driver reportedly claimed that the vehicle was in “self-driving mode” leading up to getting stuck on the train tracks.
Tesla claims that all its vehicles built since 2016 will be capable of unsupervised self-driving with software updates; however, this has yet to occur.
Instead, Tesla has been selling a “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package for up to $15,000 that requires the driver to constantly supervise the vehicle, with the driver remaining responsible for the car at all times.
Electrek’s Take
There have been instances of Tesla drivers engaging in reckless behavior and then attributing it to the Full Self-Driving (FSD) features.
I’m not saying it’s the case here, but it’s a possibility.
On the other side, I’ve seen FSD try to navigate around construction barriers. It’s possible that it tried to do that in this case, here and then got caught on the tracks.
We would need more data.
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