Analysis of 10 real-world outage events reveals whether it's worth investing in rooftop solar and battery storage technologies.
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., 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.
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.that providing backup for cooling and heat can be a challenge, though not an insurmountable one. Homes in the Southeast and Pacific Northwest often have power-hogging electric resistance heaters, exceeding the capability of solar and storage during winter outages.Homes with efficient heat pumps performed better.
The ability to power commercial buildings varies widely, depending on the building type. 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.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.
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.
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