[thebiss]

What is your recovery plan in the event of a hurricane?

I'm not fond of high electric rates, but in addition to generation those rates amortize and distribute the cost of storm recovery. A home or business with grid-tied solar pays interconnect fees for the option to get paid back a little for excess generation, and the option to decide to switch back to 100% grid power if a storm damages the on-site panels.

[gopalv]

> those rates amortize and distribute the cost of storm recovery

Not exactly when it is a farm out there away from a town.

My experience is from a different era (90s) and a different kind of farm, but I spent a bunch of summers in one, which had power outages whenever the monsoons picked up.

The trouble was that there was a single line feeding the farm from about 6km away, so if that went down a single farmowner complained - the rate payers who were in a denser urban area always got priority, because there were 600+ people who shared a transformer.

The generator ran a lot when winds knocked power out, but the generator only ran when there was a big power need like running the well pumps or one of the winnowing mills. Even the winnower had pedals, because work doesn't stop.

Every bathroom had a light with a 30 minute battery in it, which came on when the power went out - I guess if they had LEDs those same batteries would be 6 hour lights.

They would have killed for solar + storage, because shipping fuel in for the generator was one of those annoying things you had to keep doing over and over again.

[p_j_w]

>The trouble was that there was a single line feeding the farm from about 6km away, so if that went down a single farmowner complained - the rate payers who were in a denser urban area always got priority, because there were 600+ people who shared a transformer.

The urban rate payers also subsidize the rural ones, so it makes sense that they'd be front of the line.

[devilbunny]

I would have thought an isolated farm would have had propane on site - likely more than one tank.

I don’t worry about outages much in my current home because the main line to ~1000 houses goes right past me, and I’m fed straight from it. If I’m out, it’s a very high priority line. Worst ever was about two days. It helps that our worst storms are usually in spring, so weather is mild.

[rz2k]

After a hurricane, the plan might be to help neighbors charge their phones, or sell electricity to telcos to power their networks switches and cell towers.

I think I am much less remote than the poster, and I can easily lose power for a week or more after a winter storm. Considering that they already have generators on site that can manage the full load, they probably have much better up time than the utility electricity provider.

[K0balt]

All underground infrastructure or in concrete utility huts. Powerplant is concrete, no flooding issues due to excellent drainage of the area.

We can run on generator to charge the batteries for about 2 weeks on the fuel we keep. Other than that, we rebuild what isn’t broken and later buy more panels. Most of our mounts should be good to about 150mph, but trees also fly so?

Good news is we can buy panels here about $120 for a 500 watt panel.

Also we have some geographic protection from the full brunt of a storm , as we are in a mountainous eddy zone that typically sees about 30 percent of the coastal and mountaintop wind speed when a cyclone passes nearby as they frequently do.