Image credit – University of California San Diego
As solar panels draw energy from the sun to power homes and offices, in case you did not know, during a power outage, such devices are actually powered down due to safety reasons, which means that if you were hoping to rely on your solar panel to continue providing your home with energy during a blackout, you’d be mistaken.
This is where devices like Tesla’s Powerwall comes in handy where it can provide homeowners with backup power in such an event. However thanks to work done by engineers at the University of California San Diego, they have come up with an algorithm that will actually be able to take advantage of your solar panels during an outage to potentially help provide energy to other homes or places in need.
This algorithm will help homes to disconnect from the grid, and use and share the renewable energy they generated from their solar panels to other areas that might have need of it. The algorithm works by taking into account things like weather forecast, the amount of energy available, how much energy a home might need, connected devices like electric cars, and will also prioritize equipment that needs it, like life-support devices.
According to the paper’s first author Abdulelah H. Habib, “We were inspired to start investigating a way to use renewable power during outages after Hurricane Sandy affected eight million people on the East Coast and left some without power for up to two weeks.”
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