Access to electricity is a critical component to the prosperity, safety, and general well-being of every human being. For homeowners, it is important to stay connected during power outages, and with more people working, schooling, and operating businesses from home, they need reliable access to electricity. There are several strategies for getting ahead of potential blackouts. One of them is to supplement the grid power with a battery storage system.
Sometimes, two is better than one. Solar panels on your roof and battery in your garage is one such case. Having a storage solution helps you on two major occasions: 1) When the sun is not shining & 2) When the already straining grid will not be able to bear the weight of either climate-change-induced extreme weather or overall increased demand.
To see how solar battery storage keeps your solar systems working during an outage with reliable, renewable solar power, let us discuss two different scenarios:
When your grid fails you
We are talking about a tiny community on the edge of Yosemite National Park lost the only power line connecting it to the electrical grid when a wildfire broke out two years ago.
Increasingly, dry hillsides force utilities to drop the idea of adding more poles and wires, which ultimately may be a reason for some catastrophic fire in the region. Rather the electricity company gave them a self-reliant power system. A minigrid grid made of solar panels and batteries.
Last year again fierce heatwaves led utilities to knowingly disconnect the power to large swaths of the state to keep high-voltage transmission lines from igniting any fire in the area.
But this time, the previous small community kept the electricity flowing with the help of microgrids using solar energy generated and stored in battery banks. Energy experts said microgrids highlight the technology’s potential in providing reliable power to almost everyone in times of emergency.
“Anything that can give you a little bit of electricity, charge your phone or keep the fridge running when it is dark, is enormously valuable. Microgrids can play a huge part in that,” said Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
When you do not bother about grid failure anymore
You purchased land which is luckily located on a boundary of two utility territories. But unfortunately, it led to a back-and-forth situation between both the utilities whose territory it actually was. Somehow when one of them laid claim to the plot, your neighbors refused to give right of way on their properties to run electricity to the site.
Being totally fed up, you went to a local solar installer and asked them that you want to go totally off the grid. It was challenging but you have no option. First, utilities are not ready, now, you’re unwilling neighborhood.
Residing in a remote location and that too without a grid is difficult but not unrealistic. Typically, with off-grid, you are asked to limit your usage and need to install LEDs everywhere. All you need is sufficient roof space to fit ample solar panels to produce the required energy + enough battery packs to keeps appliances on throughout the night. Ta-da! Solar is powering it all, with energy storage keeping it running after sunset.
There is no reason to sit in your house and wonder when the utility is going to shut off the power or when the power lines are going to go down. Just click the below button.
