Solar Questions after the Storm

To all:
From each of us at Built Well Solar, our thoughts and prayers go out to all of you, your families and friends impacted by the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.

As you likely know, more than 930,000 LIPA customers – about 90 percent of LIPA’s 1.1 million ratepayers  –  were, and many still are, without electricity.
Before the hurricane hit, we sent an e-mail to our customers related to their solar energy systems and how their “mini power plants” are designed to shut off when LIPA’s power goes down. (See prior post.)

Since then, we have received questions from a few of our customers, including a few asking if they could redirect their solar panels “off grid” or install some type of battery back up system to avoid outages of their homes or businesses during future storms.
Our recommendation to these customers and others before them is and has always been the most practical and least pricey solution -- to purchase a generator.
Unfortunately, from an environmental standpoint, this does mean temporarily running power to your home using gasoline…yes, a fossil fuel.  

Still, there are a few reasons we recommend a generator:

First, “off grid” is not available in LIPA territory. A home or business cannot bypass the LIPA net meter (grid tie in).  In short, LIPA does not allow solar panels to be hooked up directly to a generator. 

Second, solar energy battery backup systems are possible, but again we do not recommend them, particularly for the occasional user (the Long Islander with a rare outage due to a major storm is not the same as a remote farmer Upstate, for example) because they can be very pricey and also usually need replacing every few years. In other words, if costs are not a consideration (after all, one reason many people switch to solar is to save money!) and if you lose your power frequently under relatively normal weather conditions, then this might be a viable option worth exploring for you. If not, probably not.

We know there continues to be a very difficult period ahead for many Long Islanders as clean-up and recovery from this historically destructive storm continues. Later on, however, if any of you would like to discuss this further with us in preparation for the future we will, of course, be available.

For now, please rest assured we stand ready to assist in any way we can with our customers' solar energy system-related needs or any other concerns they may have right now.

All the best, and stay safe,
Your friends at Built Well Solar Corp.