Recently, about two million people on the East Coast were left without power by a ‘bomb cyclone’, including several hundred thousand in Massachusetts. As a response to the outages, Sunrun is expanding its home solar battery service to Massachusetts. Called Brightbox, Sunrun’s lithium-ion battery system is designed to work well with a home solar power system.
The solar panels generate electricity during daylight hours when there is adequate sunlight to charge the battery, which can be used during a power outage. Sunrun says on its site, “Our lithium-ion battery is charged by your solar panels, and powers on during an outage for up to 10 hours. When the sun comes back out, your panels start recharging again.” The Brightbox system uses an LG Chem battery.
“Americans want control over their energy future. Last year, Massachusetts had one of the highest outage rates in the country. Unfortunately, this number is increasing every year. Rooftop solar, together with a home battery, provides both reliable power and significant cost savings. Massachusetts has been a champion of innovative clean energy technologies, and Sunrun is delighted to bring our Brightbox home battery service to the Commonwealth. Brightbox offers Bay Staters a clean, affordable and resilient way to power their homes, even when the grid is down,” explained Lynn Jurich, Sunrun Chief Executive Officer and co-founder.
CNN noted that the power outage probably wouldn’t be a brief one for many of the people who were impacted by the severe weather, “People in these homes need to plan for a prolonged outage. This is a multi-day restoration event,” said Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
Gas-powered generators are commonly used in such situations, but they can be noisy, and emit noxious fumes. They also obviously consume gas and during a long-lasting outage that can be expensive.
In 2017 it was reported that at that time, Sunrun had installed about 1,000 Brightbox systems, mostly in Hawaii.
Image Credit: Sunrun
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