Life Without Power Outages: Distributed Renewables are Key to Energy Security, Independence

If you were one of the 4,000 people who lost power during Sunday night’s storm in the Salt Lake area and elsewhere, ask yourself: WHAT IF THE POWER DIDN’T COME BACK? Sound crazy? Ask the people Quebec and New England who lost power for more than one month at the height of winter back in 1996 after one of the worst ice storms in history. One of the kept promises of distributive, renewable energy is that it provides as much back-up power for your house through battery storage as you can afford as well as restoring those batteries during the day, whether it’s solar, wind, geothermal or whatever. So you can go on living normally regardless of the failings of the local utility.

When there’s a power outage at our house, we find out about it by looking out at our neighbors’ darkened windows or by email alert from our solar/utility integration unit, Gridpoint. We typically carry 30-40 hours of back-up power in our batteries which will power virtually the entire house for that time, longer if we cut back on a few things. The batteries are then replenished when the sun comes out.

Talk about security and independence. We’re happier now because we don’t worry about the power going out. We don’t curse the power company nearly as much as we used to. Not that they don’t deserve it.