Solar Nerd articles about: Blackouts

Enphase recently announced that it is releasing a bidirectional electric vehicle charger. This means that not only is it capable of charging a car, but also drawing power from a car and sending it to your home or the grid. This is unique because most EV chargers are unidirectional, which means they’re only capable of sending electricity in one direction - from the electric grid (ie. your home) to the car.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has been doing planned blackouts through the wildfire season in 2019 as an emergency measure to avoid deadly wirefires like the Camp Fire of 2018 that killed 85 people and burned over 150,000 acres. Today’s planned blackout will be largest yet: over 800,000 customers will be affected. The Camp Fire of 2018 was caused by a faulty PG&E power transmission line in Butte County. A fallen PG&E power line sparked a fire on the morning of November 8, and within two days more than 6,700 structures had already been burned.

One common misconception about home solar panels is that they’ll keep your house powered even if the electric grid goes down. They can, but only if you have the right equipment to go with it. First of all, let’s understand one thing that might seem obvious: solar panels don’t work in the dark. For the majority of homes that have solar panels, this means having a grid connection that supplies power when your panels don’t generate any electricity.