An Off Grid Perspective
You can’t turn on the news today without hearing about another weather related story.
One hundred mile an hour winds in southern California, wild fires raging through the western United States, hurricanes pounding the southern states. Forget the snow storms, now we have earthquakes in the eastern states, and then hurricane Irene shuts down the city that never sleeps. What’s going on here? Well the good news is not more than ever before. Weather statistics show that severe weather is not getting worse. The bad news is we are just more aware of it through the advent of global media. The other factor is, with more of us living on the planet than ever before and more of us building in flood plains and coastal areas, weather is affecting us in ways we’ve never seen. It doesn’t even matter if you believe in global weather change or not, with more of us to affect, weather will become a major factor in our lives sooner than later.
My personal off grid perspective is that I have one major concern out of the way when disaster strikes. Power. It all comes back to this when things get bad. Without electricity things get worse very quickly. Lack of water, food, communication, heat and air conditioning rule the way we live today. All of these basic needs are dependent on electricity. If you’re living off grid this is easy, but what if you’re connected to the grid and the power goes out?
We have the solution. For the past five years we have been installing and selling systems that we call hybrid solar that allows the solar electric system to continue to operate after the grid goes down. This hybrid solar market is becoming very popular with folks who want to be prepared for emergencies, when the grid goes down for a few hours or a few weeks. We have customized many systems for families and businesses that need power when the grid is down based on how much power they need to generate until the grid power comes back on line.
If you are preparing for the next El Niño or other natural event, call us so that you will be energy ready. For me, when disaster strikes I hope to hunker down and ride it out with my lights ablaze and a cold beer in the fridge.