Parker County Today September 2016 | Page 71

Who’s Got Your Backup? The Evolution to Personal Power Bracing for a big power grid attack: ‘One is too many’ BY RICHARD A. FLOREY Marketing Director EcoVantage Energy, inc. www./ecovantageenergy.com “…A widespread outage lasting even a few days could disable devices ranging from ATMs to cellphones to traffic lights, and could threaten lives if heating, air conditioning and health care systems exhaust their backup power supplies. “It’s one of those things: One is too many, so that’s why we have to pay attention,” said Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Cheryl LaFleur. “The threats continue to evolve, and we have to continue to evolve as well.” - Steve Reilly, USA TODAY, March 24, 2015 T Nissan, Mercedes and others, will be providing their versions of battery backup, at hopefully lower prices. Though these systems are aesthetically pleasing, they generally do not hold as much power as a typical AGM based system, and are made to be daisy-chained up to nine units to meet your essential needs. That sort of takes away the cost savings. But they do look great, and maybe that’s an incentive to you. hese are certainly exciting times, changes of every kind are happening all around us. Now, change is one of two things; either it’s something to dread, or something to embrace as positive. Last month, I wrote about how technology and innovation overcome the bothersome little nuisances of life, my point being; that there could be no greater nuisance than going without electric power for extended periods of time, if not indefinitely. Without electricity, we’ll be relegated to the 1800’s within hours. In order to avoid that ugly scenario, having personal power is the only viable option. Something to Think About Electric utilities all around the world are building solar and wind power plants because they see the future of lower maintenance, high efficiency and reduced vulnerability as huge pluses for themselves. We say; so should you. PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY Success Favors the Prepared In the next few years, a host of companies like Tesla, SEPTEMBER 2016 Batteries ARE the Ke y You can have all the solar in the world, but when the sun goes down, then what? Well, during the day, storing your excess power into a battery bank for future use has become more and more popular among solar owners, including utilities. For the most part, your excess production just goes back into the grid. However, when the grid is down, your inverter will instantly begin using the stored power from the batteries to power essential systems until grid power is restored. How long this service period lasts is completely up to how much storage capacity you have installed. The typical system has a bank of twelve batteries that can last up to eight hours, depending on how many items you have on your essential systems list. 69