Solar Companies Seek Ways to Build an Oasis of Electricity

[groovedaddy]

When Hurricane Sandy wiped out the power in areas like coastal Long Island and the Jersey Shore, what should have been beacons of hope — hundreds of solar panels glinting from residential rooftops — became symbols of frustration.

Despite the popular perception that installing solar panels takes a home “off the grid,” most of those systems are actually part of it, sending excess power to the utility grid during the day and pulling electricity back to run the house at night. So when the storm took down power lines and substations across the Northeast, safety systems cut the power in solar homes just like everywhere else.

“Here’s a $70,000 system sitting idle,” said Ed Antonio, who lives in the Rockaways in Queens and has watched his 42 panels as well as those on several other houses in the area go unused since the power went out Oct. 29. “That’s a lot of power sitting. Just sitting.”

Yet there are ways to tap solar energy when the grid goes down, whether by adding batteries to a home system or using the kinds of independent solar generators that have been cropping up in areas hard-hit by the storm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/business/energy-environment/solar-power-as-solution-for-storm-darkened-homes.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121120

[Little Star]

1. Hope they find a way. k&r

[phantom power]

2. I've read you can get a device that auto-disconnects when incoming voltage drops out

In fact, I think they're required for the safety of grid maintainers, so your solar install doesn't electrocute them. I thought there was an option for leaving your panels on, just disconnected from the grid.

[hunter]

3. Not much to do but add batteries and inverters to home systems.

I can imagine something like neighborhood 300-480VDC interties and smart substations but we're not going there anytime soon. It'd be a miracle if we could simply convince our power companies to replace their overhead lines and other vulnerable and archaic equipment with more robust, entirely conventional modern technologies.