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Been taking a break from this after my class, but it is time to update and get back into the swing of posting-

Last night Virginia had what’s called a ‘derecho’, a storm that came through our area in a straight line with a lot of wind. A lot of people all over the country are dealing with the grid power outages caused by this storm.

It is as good of time as any to introduce a topic that is important to me as a pellet stove owner- disaster recovery.

You see, one of the main reasons that I bought and installed a pellet stove in my home in the first place is that I wanted a secondary source of heat in case my first source (electric heat pumps) was not operational.

In 2007 I had a 2 kilowatt solar panel array mounted on my roof, and made grid-tied and battery-tied. The solar panels produce electricity that I can use if I need it, or, can be stored by my batteries, or, fed back into the grid. If grid power goes out, I can still use the electricity from the panels, or rely on the electricity from the batteries for a few days until the batteries need to be replenished. Its a matter of redundancy. 

Except the solar and the batteries do not produce enough power for the heat pumps to operate. So in the winter, if I lose grid power, what do I do for heat? Enter the pellet stove, which I think I bought in 2009. Its ignition and blower fan can operate on just the electricity from the solar or batteries. 

Is it perfect? No. Obviously, I am still relying on being able to have an adequate source of wood pellets on hand. The batteries may take longer to replenish in the winter. But it is a lot better than what a lot of people have, which is nothing. 

It’s hard to think about heat and stoves right now, as Virginia is experiencing crazy, triple-digit temperatures, but disaster recovery is all about preparing in advance. When it comes to distributed solar energy, I will note that I have written about the topic on my neighborhood’s news website as well as testified in public hearing to Virginia’s State Corporation Commission. I will flesh this post out more in the near future.