PG&E has shut off power to NorCal homes 30+ times since 2019. A solar battery keeps the lights on automatically — no generator, no switching, no fuel.
We design every system to cover the essentials below by default. Whole-home backup is available with a larger battery configuration.
Public Safety Power Shutoffs are PG&E's standard response to high fire risk. When winds pick up and humidity drops, PG&E pre-emptively de-energizes transmission lines that pass through high-risk terrain. The goal is to prevent a downed line from sparking a wildfire. The consequence is that anyone downstream of those lines — sometimes hundreds of thousands of customers across multiple counties — loses power for hours or days.
These events have happened during nearly every fall fire season since 2019. They tend to last between several hours and several days. They’re forecast a day or two in advance, but the timing and restoration windows are often longer than predicted. For most homeowners, the experience is: the lights go out, the refrigerator warms up, the WiFi disappears, and there’s no clear answer on when it comes back.
If your home has a solar battery installed properly with a backup-rated electrical panel, the transition is automatic. Within milliseconds of the grid going down, the battery isolates your home from the utility lines and starts feeding power to your essential circuits. Most homeowners notice only because the WiFi router reboots once.
Through the day, your panels continue producing — charging the battery while it powers the home. As long as the sun comes up, the cycle continues: charge during the day, discharge through the night. A two-Powerwall system in a typical home can keep essentials running for several days through a multi-day outage.
What runs depends on how the system is sized and which circuits are backed up. We design every system to cover the essentials shown above by default — lights, refrigeration, internet, and medical equipment. Whole-home backup is available if needed, but requires a larger battery configuration and a closer look at heavy loads like air conditioning and electric vehicle charging.
PG&E's service territory covers most of Northern California, including some of the highest fire-risk terrain in the country. The combination of dry summer winds, aging transmission infrastructure, and post-wildfire liability has made PSPS events a regular part of fall. Most homeowners in PG&E territory have lost power at least once in the past few years, and many have lost power multiple times.
Generators work, but they require fuel, maintenance, and manual startup. A solar battery requires none of those things. The system handles the transition silently, and the sun refills the tank every morning.
Every qualifying install includes battery storage. We work with Tier-1 manufacturers only: Tesla Powerwall, Franklin Home Power, and Enphase IQ Battery. The choice between them depends on your home’s electrical setup, expected loads, and which products are best suited to your specific install. The decision is made together as part of your proposal.
Battery configuration is part of the same agreement as the rest of the system. No separate purchase, no separate decision, no upfront cost.
A short utility bill review tells us whether your home qualifies, what size battery you’d need, and what the monthly numbers look like. No cost, no pressure.
