I found a nifty product on Amazon that aids during blackouts. It’s an LED light-bulb with additional circuitry and an internal battery, which senses whether its local dumb switch is in the on or off position, and is able to use its own battery to turn the light on and off, even when central power is off.
I’d love to be able to use these bulbs with smart switches; however, a switch that relies upon central power for its entire operation means that it cannot work during a blackout. So my house has to have both smart and dumb switches, if I don’t want to be completely in the dark during a blackout (minus the battery operated lanterns, which are never handy).
But if my Inovelli smart switch had an internal battery of its own, and it could switch to that power, when central power was out, I could use an Inovelli switch with these special light bulbs. It could potentially be either a replaceable alkaline, with an accessible battery compartment, or possibly even better, it could be a builtin, rechargeable lithium ion battery, which the main power could keep above a threshold, while central power was functioning.
The unit would probably need a hard reset momentary contact switch, or a physical tab to pull out, so we could still reset the switch when it gets into an odd state, as cutting the power at the circuit breaker would be insufficient if the switch has a battery backup.