At the peak of the Hurricane Beryl power outage, more than 2 million Houston-area residents struggled to get by in the sweltering summer heat without electricity. The delayed restoration of power — still not complete — highlights the advantages of having rooftop solar power paired with battery storage. Those equipped with their own power generation and backup systems were able to weather the hurricane and its aftermath with some degree of normalcy.
Hurricane Beryl caused extensive storm damage throughout the Houston area. Photo: Meridith Kohut/NY Times
Solar panels aren’t immune to storm damage, of course, but they’re built to withstand hurricane-force winds as well as hailstorms and icestorms. Damage to solar panels makes virtually no difference, however, when a homeowner or small business owner has battery backup for solar.
During a power outage, a home or small business equipped with solar plus battery backup can survive for days without relying on electricity from the grid.
‘Modest’ energy storage can have big impact
Don’t take our word for this. Researchers at the federally funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory conclude that a rooftop solar system with just one 10- or 30-kilowatt-hour backup battery can be a powerful duo when the power grid shuts down.
“In general, we found that even a modest system of solar plus one battery can power critical loads in a home for days at a time, practically anywhere in the country,” the researchers say in a 2022 report.
Citing several recent natural disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires, the research team found that rooftop solar plus backup storage could have made a positive impact during power outages. One of these was Hurricane Harvey, which slammed the Texas coast in 2017.
Quoting the report: “Solar and storage would have been a big help in that case, providing virtually all power needs for a typical single-family home, once the skies cleared.”
The rise of rooftop solar in Texas
Increasingly, homeowners and small business owners in the Houston area and throughout Texas are turning to solar panels and backup batteries. Why? For one thing, solar power provides peace of mind during and after hurricanes like Beryl and Harvey, as well as snowstorms and other natural disasters.
A 2024 report published by Environment America and Frontier Group showed that the Lone Star State ranked fifth in the U.S. for the growth of small-scale solar power generation — primarily from rooftop systems — from 2012 to 2022. Statewide, total installed capacity for small-scale solar power soared from 76 gigawatt-hours in 2012 to 2,995 gigawatt-hours in 2022. That’s an astounding increase of 3,841% in just a 10-year span.
As of October 2023, Texas had an estimated 294,818 rooftop solar installations, according to the Texas Solar Energy Society.
In Houston, the biggest city in the U.S. that’s prone to frequent hurricanes, the number of solar installations is rising. Why? Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research says this is thanks to lower costs for solar panels, more cost-effective leasing options, and increased opportunities to join solar cooperatives and community solar projects.
Texans are bullish on rooftop solar
A large swath of Texas residents back the state’s surge in solar power.
In a 2023 poll conducted by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs:
- 82% of Texans said they supported legislation that would allow financial incentives (such as tax breaks or rebates) for homeowners and business owners to install rooftop solar panels and battery storage.
- 44% of Texans expressed more interest in buying a solar power system, such as rooftop solar panels and battery storage, in the wake of the February 2021 winter storm that cut power for at least 4.5 million utility customers statewide.
In a post-Beryl interview with NPR, Michael Webber, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin who focuses on energy issues, made a case for stepped-up installation in Texas of rooftop solar panels paired with backup batteries.
“That will help prop up the grid,” he said, “if we have more supply from the solar panels or backup from the batteries.”
That’s a truth that Houston-area homeowners and business owners are only starting to realize.
For more information on how to go solar with battery backup, or to add energy storage to your solar system, contact us.
