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Solar Panels, a Battery, and a Blackout
This is the future — we can reduce the cost of power for everyone
In 2020, I had the misfortune of seeing the electric power service to my home interrupted five times, with at least one interruption lasting more than nine hours. Apparently, the same truck driver, working for the same Walmart about two miles from here, kept colliding with the same transformer. It was maddening and scary that something like that could remove power from my home.
As someone who works from home, I became very aware that those service interruptions impact my work, my family, and my peace. We had another blackout just last month, and it wasn’t the same truck driver this time. But this time, I was prepared. Last January, I had solar power and batteries installed on and inside my home.
On November 17th, my home experienced a service interruption lasting over two hours. At the start of the blackout, my lights flickered briefly while the system switched to battery power, at about a quarter to six. My home was the only one in the neighborhood with the lights still on.
During that 2.25-hour service interruption, a 10 kW battery discharged 14% of its capacity. This works out to about 6.2% of battery capacity per hour. From there, I calculated that I had a total of 16 hours of uptime…
