Highly destructive recent fire seasons have led the state’s three investor-owned utilities to increasingly utilize public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), often cutting grid power to millions of people for days at a time. Many utility customers are forced to purchase extension cords and fossil-fuel burning generators to supply home backup power one circuit at a time, increasing carbon outputs and decreasing safety.
Connect California seeks to enable homeowners to make more of their own clean energy choices with less hassle from utilities and lower costs.
Connect California works with industry experts to create solutions to electrical infrastructure challenges, such as the IslandDER™. Combined with compatible systems, IslandDER solves the basic connectivity and safety challenges to using an EV to power a home or a small business.
- Enables standard grid-tied rooftop solar energy systems to ride through outages by keeping an EV or portable/stationary battery charged and the home energized
- Provides a safer way for existing fuel-based generators to power an entire home by removing the need to use extension cords or place a fossil fuel based backup generator inside the home
- Reduces the cost of backup power by streamlining safety and making backup power ‘plug and play’ for the whole home