Pacific Gas & Electric’s recent, extended and widespread shutdown of the electrical grid in Northern California as a precaution against recreating last year’s deadly Camp Fire, made national news two weeks ago.
Then, as Noozhawk reported last week in advance of expected extreme weather conditions over the weekend, Southern California Edison threatened to do more of the same.
These pre-emptive shutdowns sent countless customers of the public utilities scrambling for coolers, batteries, flashlights and even gas-powered generators, and put more than 1 million California residents in the dark.
Grid shutdowns can make life grind to a halt, but they don’t have to. Here are three reasons you should consider battery storage systems as a solution to grid outages:
You Can Have Power During a Blackout
If you don’t like that helpless feeling when the power blips out, take control. A residential battery storage system, referred to as “behind the meter,” integrates stored power that acts as a backup to grid power.
Depending on the system and installation, utility customers can back-up their whole house, or break out specific circuits to be protected. Combined with solar on a home, systems could provide basic power needs to a single-family home indefinitely.
Swell Energy, a Santa Monica-based sales and engineering design group, proposes a standard installation of two Tesla Powerwall units, which provide about 27 kilowatts of power storage. See for yourself how long the Powerwall unit can last on Tesla’s interactive calculator.
Swell has been contracted by SCE to deploy 14 megawatts of battery storage systems into homes, behind the meter power on Santa Barbara County’s South Coast and in Ventura County. That is the rough equivalent of the power needed to run about 140,000 light bulbs, each 100 watts, for an hour.
These installations provide a long-term solution and can help put California homeowners’ minds at ease the next time they get notification of a power outage with only 24 hours’ notice.
You Can Get Government Incentives
Utility customers in areas of high wildfire risk can tap into a government incentive program to have solar batteries installed as a backup when the grid goes down.
“California regulators want to direct $100 million in state energy storage incentives to a new class of disadvantaged customers: those living in parts of the state at the highest risk of deadly wildfires,” according to Green Tech Media.
This would include vulnerable households, critical services facilities, and low-income solar powered homes in high-fire threat districts.
However, everyone is eligible, including businesses, to participate in the California Public Utilities Commission’s Self-Generation Incentive Program, and potentially qualify for the federal tax credit. To see if you qualify, click here to go to the Swell Energy Application Portal and see if it might be right for you.
The Utility Company Will Pay You
When everyone in the city is switching on lights and turning up the air conditioner, there’s a demand spike for power. As a “demand response,” SCE wants to partner with solar-backup homes to offset the power drain — and to pay you for it.
“If you have the batteries installed and you’re in the Edison behind-the-meter program, you agree for a certain price that Edison can reach in and tap into your stored energy,” said Marshall Howen, president and founder of Sunrise 805, an exclusive certified solar installation company for the Santa Barbara area.
“The utility knows when you’re both producing and using power, thanks to smart meters,” he said. “The more sophisticated battery storage you have, the more dynamic your system can be used to do things like not take power from the grid during that high peak time.
“You can program your system to shut off the grid yourself so that you’re taking stored energy, and therefore controlling how much you pay.”
If you want to incorporate solar, battery storage, or both into a new building or retrofit your home or business for solar, contact Sunrise 805. This local, family-owned company is committed to providing resilient energy for home and business owners in Santa Barbara and the Central Coast.
Click here to visit Sunrise 805, or call 805.895.6096 for a free quote.