![]() ![]() ![]() Hurricane Harvey, on the other hand, slammed the Texas coast in August 2017 but moved on to cause widespread damage elsewhere in Texas. After Hurricane Florence knocked out power in North Carolina in 2018, cloudy skies hung around for three days, dimming or even stopping solar panels’ output. We found that in seven of the outages, most homes would have been able to maintain critical loads plus heating and cooling using solar with 30 kWh of storage, or just over two Powerwalls.īut the weather around the outage can have a big impact, especially for hurricanes. ![]() We also looked at 10 real-world outage events from 2017 to 2020, including hurricanes, wildfires and storms, and modeled building performance for specific locations and real weather patterns during and after the outages. How solar would have handled 10 past disasters ![]() Schools and big-box retail stores, with sufficient roof space for solar relative to building power demand, fare much better than multistory, energy-intensive buildings like hospitals. The ability to power commercial buildings varies widely, depending on the building type. Where solar and storage with a 10-kWh battery can supply backup power, in various scenarios. For example, simple thermostat adjustments during power outages reduce heating and cooling needs and allow solar with storage to maintain backup power over longer periods. Larger solar and battery systems can help, but meeting demand during outages still depends on the weather, how energy efficient the home is and other factors. Summer air conditioning load can be heavy in the Southwest, making it harder to meet all cooling needs with solar and storage in a summer blackout. Homes with efficient heat pumps performed better. Homes in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest often have power-hogging electric resistance heaters, exceeding the capability of solar and storage during winter outages. In general, we found that even a modest system of solar plus one battery can power critical loads in a home for days at a time, practically anywhere in the country.īut our maps show that providing backup for cooling and heat can be a challenge, though not an insurmountable one. To put that into perspective, the most popular battery on the market, the Tesla Powerwall, has just over 13 kWh of storage. How much can solar + storage do?įor a new report, we modeled a generic power outage for every county in the U.S., testing whether a rooftop solar system combined with a 10- or 30-kilowatt-hour battery could power critical loads, like refrigeration, lighting, internet service and well pumps if it could go further and also power heating and air conditioning or if it could even power a whole home. Our team at Berkeley Lab explored what it would take for homes and commercial buildings to ride out long power outages, of three days or more, with solar and batteries. Each day, the sun powers the home and charges up the batteries, which provide power through the night. But with batteries, a home can disconnect from the grid. When the grid goes down, most solar systems that lack a battery will also shut down. In areas where storms or extreme heat and cold have knocked out the power for days at a time, people are starting to ask whether investing in rooftop solar and battery storage systems can keep the lights on and the air conditioner running when the power grid can’t. ![]()
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