As California Burns, Customers Flock to Batteries and Solar

Power outages in the fire-prone state could mean big business for rooftop solar and storage systems

Kate Wheeling
OneZero

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A car drives passed a power station in Mill Valley, California as a statewide blackout continues on October, 10, 2019.
Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty

LLast week, large swaths of northern California went dark as the state’s largest utility cut power to hundreds of thousands of its customers. It was Pacific Gas & Electric’s third deliberate outage in two months — part of the company’s efforts to keep its aging transmission lines from sparking blazes when conditions are ripe for wildfires — and the largest blackout to date: An estimated 2.5 million people were affected.

The outages were short-lived, but they certainly won’t be the last. Climate change is making dangerous fire conditions the norm in California, and “de-energizing,” as power outages are referred to, has become a part of every major utility’s fire mitigation plan, called for by California lawmakers after some of the state’s most devastating fires in recent years were linked to malfunctioning PG&E equipment — including 2018’s deadly Camp Fire.

The blackouts are meant to be a stopgap measure while the utilities upgrade equipment and clear vegetation around power lines, but these mitigation efforts are expected to take years and billions of dollars to complete.

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Kate Wheeling
OneZero

freelance environmental journalist. @katewheeling