Solar panels and a home battery each do something useful on their own. But the reason so many Southern Oregon homeowners install them together is that, as a pair, they solve a problem neither one fully solves alone: keeping your home powered through a utility outage, either due to fire season or inclement weather. Here’s how they actually work together.

If you want to keep your home powered through an outage, you have two main choices: a generator or a home battery. Both work. They’re just good at different things. We install batteries, so you know where we’re coming from, but here’s the honest version, including where a generator has the edge.

Here’s a question we get all the time from homeowners across the Rogue Valley, usually with a frustrated look: “I have solar panels. The sun is out. Why is my house dark during a power outage?”