PG&E Planned Outage: Are You Prepared?

PG&E has notified customers throughout Northern California that they will be susceptible to a PG&E planned outage during the coming fire season. This is causing uncertainty and anxiety among customers who do not know when they will lose their power. It also brings a whole host of other issues. People will need to plan for i.e. losing refrigeration, losing power to vital medical equipment, and losing power for perishable products.

Some areas that are heavily wooded with dense, dry vegetation are more prone to wildfires. But this doesn’t mean that the power will only be shut down within those areas. When a utility shuts down power transmission it affects an area that runs the entire length of the transmission line so if you live near a wildfire-prone area, but your neighborhood is clear of heavy dry vegetation and does not normally experience wildfires your power could still be cut due to being within a transmission area that is shut down.

Solutions

There are solutions that the average home and business owner can start planning for now to address outages. Energy storage is one way to address a temporary loss of power. The average homeowner in California uses approximately 15-kilowatt hours of energy per day. This is running most appliances and devices that require electricity in a normal manner with consistent power available at all times. If a homeowner wants to protect their refrigerated items, keep a few lights on and charge their cell phones then they will use a fraction of those 15-kilowatt hours. There are several, affordable home battery solutions that will cover this kind of use by producing 7-10 kilowatt hours per charge.

This could get you through a couple of days of an outage. If you combine the storage with solar and charge the battery during the day via a solar system you can keep your home running much longer with conservative electricity usage. There are also scalable energy storage solutions available now for businesses of all sizes. Companies like Home Depot have been deploying battery storage in many of their stores across the U.S.

Del Sol Provides Options

Del Sol Energy has been providing clients in California with energy storage for several years and we have seen the cost come down considerably and the feature sets of these products improve providing a flexible and user-friendly experience to address the needs to varying customer uses. In addition to peace of mind when the power goes out consumers are eligible for rebates through the SGIP Self-Generation Incentive Program https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/sgip/ to help reduce the upfront cost of investing in storage.

For more information and a free quote on Energy Storage, Solar, Electric Vehicle Charging and Energy Management Solutions contact a Del Sol Energy Consultant at 925 350-4121, visit our website at www.DelSolEnergy.com or drop by our Solar Showroom at 225 Oak Street in downtown Brentwood, CA to take a look at these products in person and have all of your questions answered.