Future of Houston: How to make your home more resilient to power outages

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- The February freeze of 2021 left Texans powerless, literally, against the cold. Over 200 Texans died during that winter freeze, the event capitalized by a systemic failure of the statewide power grid.

Ever since, questions about how to better prepare for the next weather event have been top of mind. And with Texas in the midst of another winter freeze this week, ABC13 Meteorologist Elyse Smith went to a training facility in North Houston to learn about some of the latest technology that could help keep the lights on even during an outage.

Rolando Barcenas is an industry expert for EATON and manages their Experience Center in Houston. He says that the future of keeping power on in your home during an outage is based on whether you can collect, store, or mitigate your power use.

"I don't see utilities ever being 100% bulletproof," Barcenas said. "The resilience is there, but our demand is increasing, changing that resilience or what we expect to be resilient."

In other words, the more people connected to the grid, the more stress on the grid, thus increasing the potential for an outage when power is in peak demand, like during an extreme heat wave or freeze.

Yet, significant improvements have been made to the Texas grid since 2021. This was by creating a backup power supply by investing in both solar power and battery storage sites. These battery storage sites act as a backup during times of high demand or when other power sources, like natural gas, solar, or wind, are low.

In late January, CenterPoint submitted a $5.7 billion resiliency plan for the Houston area. But industry experts tell ABC13 that there's only so much resiliency we can add to the grid before the responsibility turns to us to keep the power on. Barcenas demonstrated a few of those solutions to ABC13 at the training facility.

READ MORE: CenterPoint Energy announces it's 'ahead of schedule' in implementing storm resiliency plan

One of the most popular ways for homeowners to have backup power is through a generator. Barcenas mentioned he, too, bought a generator after the freeze in 2021 to give his family peace of mind ahead of a storm. But you don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to make your home more power-resilient.

A simple place to start is with smart breakers, something you can find at your local hardware store. These can manage power usage in a home through load shedding, which is when they automatically cut the power to something in your home, such as the washer/dryer, that you don't need to keep on. These smart breakers are connected to Wi-Fi and can sense when power demand might be high ahead of a potential outage. In addition to smart breakers are smart light switches. While these won't prevent an outage or keep the power on, some light switches are more energy efficient, which can save you money in the long run.

For those with an EV, new technology just on the market can help you power your home from your car in an emergency.

"If you have an electric vehicle and you lose power, the last thing you do is go anywhere, right?" Barcenas said. "So why not use that car as a backup source for your house? In essence, this is your backup generator, but instead of a generator, it's your car."

Big picture, Barcenas says the way to be truly power resilient is through a microgrid. That's when you have multiple ways to both collect and store power to then use for your home or office.

"It islands yourself from any kind of power outage," Barcenas added.

In other words, you don't have to rely on utilities, or solely the Texas grid, for power.

The EATON Experience Center is an example of a microgrid. The building has four different ways to create, collect and store power. That's through solar, battery backup, generator, and utilities (the grid).

So in the case of a power outage, the training center would still have power because of the three other ways to create and store it. Besides a generator, Barcenas recommends installing solar panels to not just store power but create it too. Texas is the leader in solar power generation in the country.

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SEE ALSO: Comparing this week's freeze to that of 2021 based on the forecast and the grid