<
https://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/100-pct-useful-how-solar-and-battery-helped-one-family-and-neighbours-power-through-cyclone-alfred/>
"Anibal Zarate lived so well thanks to his home battery and solar set up during
Tropical Cyclone Alfred that even his sceptical neighbours have been convinced
it’s the way of the future.
The storm plunged more than 450,000 homes into darkness across Queensland and
northern New South Wales, with the town of Bangalow, where Zarate lives, among
the first to lose power last Wednesday.
“It’s funny how people feel lost without power. It’s dark, you need candles,
you can’t do anything,” he says. “Just to have a light on is comforting. Just
having milk that hasn’t turned to cheese is good.”
Bangalow is no stranger to power outages. A larger-than-average storm is enough
to send the power offline in the town that sits at the gateway to the Byron Bay
hinterland and the infamously bad mobile phone coverage makes communications
difficult.
Zarate says he initially set up his solar array to be free of these problems.
Since moving in, he has installed two 4 kilowatt (kW) solar arrays and two
months ago added a 19.2 kilowatt-hour (kWh) modular battery by Sungrow.
When the cyclone formed and began its meandering path towards south-east
Queensland, many turned to their electric car and the vehicle-to-load feature –
a capability of BYD, MG and other models but not shared by Tesla – to act as an
emergency generator.
Much bigger than most home batteries, batteries on wheels can provide enough
power to run a fridge and smaller appliances for up to a week.
As the cyclone approached Zarate says there was some question about whether his
home solar and storage system would be equipped to handle the demand from his
family of five, but this proved not to be an issue."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
