Blackouts in extreme weather drive demand for cleaner backup power

Software engineer Kenna Ofoegbu in Houston, Texas tries hard to keep his three kids cool during the summer and that means air conditioning.

Yet their house has lost power three times in just the past two and a half months. One of those outages lasted three days.

That time, Ofoegbu and his wife decided to pay for two nights at a hotel, both for the air conditioning and the connectivity.

“I could not afford to go multiple days without having internet connection,” the 42-year-old said. “Having power and internet access is critical to my daily work.”

When that ordeal was over, the couple did what many do if they can afford it: They bought a generator. It cost $1,500 plus some $800 for an electrician to do some wiring, and burns either propane or gasoline to keep the house running.

But burning those fuels can make the air foul to breathe and also worsens climate change, prompting Ofoegbu and many others to seek cleaner ways to maintain electricity in an emergency.

So far, the options are mostly expensive but they are improving. Here’s the current state of play:

Many people are now installing arrays of batteries at their homes. As of April, more than half of rooftop solar buyers in California chose to install batteries with their solar systems so that when the grid goes down, the house doesn’t. Nationally, sales of these solar-plus-battery systems jumped in the U.S. last year, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.

They expect 27% of new home solar systems in the U.S. this year to be paired with storage, almost doubling the share of buyers, 14%, that chose this option last year. These systems easily cost thousands of dollars, but solar and battery prices have fallen, bringing them within reach of more people. Government incentives help, too.

On the portable side, “solar generators” and boxes known as solar power stations are becoming more popular. They are not truly generators because they do not generate electricity, instead they store it for when it’s needed. Users have to prioritize certain devices or appliances during an outage, to avoid draining the battery.

One, called the “Patriot Generator,” and marketed on 4Patriots.com, costs about $2,500. It holds enough energy to run a refrigerator for 19 hours, medical devices for 15 hours or personal electronics for over 100 hours.

The companies Yeti, Bluetti and Jackery also sell these power stations — basically larger versions of the power banks people use to keep phones charged on the…