When Hurricane Ida came ashore in August 2021, it did something even Katrina hadn’t: it knocked out all eight transmission lines feeding New Orleans at once, and Entergy’s entire city grid went black. Parts of southeast Louisiana waited two to three weeks for power to return — in September heat, with no AC and no way to keep food or medicine cold. A year earlier, Hurricane Laura had done the same to the Lake Charles area. Louisiana sits on the MISO grid, but a regional grid can’t help you when the local lines into your parish are on the ground. For most homeowners, a multi-day outage isn’t a freak event; it’s the part of hurricane season you plan for. And if you’re looking at solar in Louisiana, it’s worth knowing a grid-tied system shuts off in that outage too, unless you have storage.
The outages Louisiana actually gets
Hurricane Ida, 2021. Ida knocked out all of the transmission lines feeding New Orleans and left the city and the surrounding parishes without power for a week or more, with the hardest-hit parishes waiting far longer. Losing transmission is a different problem from losing a neighbourhood line: nothing downstream can be energised until the backbone is back up.
Hurricane Laura, 2020. Laura devastated Lake Charles and southwest Louisiana, so the risk is not confined to the southeast corner of the state.
Hurricane Katrina, 2005. Still the reference event, and still the one that shapes how households here think about a long outage.
Why it is worse here than the wind alone explains. Three things compound a Louisiana outage. Heat and humidity arrive with the clear sky behind the storm. Many homes are on slab with no basement, so there is nowhere cool to retreat to indoors. Flooding can also keep repair crews out of a neighbourhood long after the wind has passed, which is why two streets in the same parish have completely different weeks.
Who has to come and fix it. Entergy Louisiana, Entergy New Orleans, Cleco and SWEPCO each rebuild their own lines, from transmission and substations outward to the branch lines and, last, the service drop to one house. A home at the end of a rural line is restored last by design.
The loads that actually matter when the AC dies
You don’t need to power the whole house — just the handful of things that matter when it’s 95°F and the grid is gone. In most Louisiana homes that’s the refrigerator (about 150W), a few LED lights (around 50W together), the Wi-Fi router (roughly 10W), phone charging (about 20W), and a fan. That’s near 300W of steady draw — well within a mid-size battery’s reach, and enough to keep a family fed, connected, and cool enough to sleep. The Solar Generator HomePower 3000 covers exactly that for one to two days, and ships with solar panels that refill it while the grid is still down.
▶ Shop the HomePower 3000 — panels included use code DEAL5
What has to stay on in a Gulf Coast outage, and for how long
Size against energy per day, not the wattage printed on the label. In this climate the load that decides everything is cooling, not heating.
| Load | Typical draw | Energy per day |
|---|---|---|
| Fridge/freezer | ~150W running (cycling) | 1,000 to 1,500Wh |
| Chest freezer | cycling | 600 to 900Wh |
| Box or pedestal fan | 30 to 60W | 400 to 700Wh (12 hrs) |
| Wi-Fi router | ~10W | ~240Wh |
| LED lights (ten bulbs) | ~50W | ~300Wh (6 hrs) |
| Phones and a laptop | 20 to 60W | 150 to 300Wh |
| CPAP (humidifier off) | 30 to 60W | 300 to 500Wh per night |
| Small window air conditioner, one room | 400 to 600W | 4,000 to 8,000Wh |
| Central air conditioning | 3,000 to 4,000W plus a large surge | Needs 240V and a 7,200W unit |
Fridge, freezer, a fan, lights, Wi-Fi, phones and a CPAP come to roughly 3,000 to 4,000Wh a day. Add a window air conditioner in one room and the day jumps to 7,000 to 12,000Wh. Cooling is several times everything else combined.
HomePower 3000. 3,072Wh, 3,600W, LiFePO4, panels included, 120V only and not expandable: about a day of essentials per charge. A fan runs for days on it. A window air conditioner is hours, not a night. A bright summer day puts 1,500 to 2,000Wh back through the panels, which is what stretches one day of battery across an Ida-length outage; under the grey overcast behind a storm, expect a few hundred watt-hours.
HomePower 3600 Plus. 3,584Wh, 3,600W, expandable to 21kWh, transfer-switch ready, 120V. Essentials for a day or so on the base unit, several days expanded, and a window unit for an evening. It is the unit for a parish waiting weeks.
Solar Generator 5000 Plus. 5,040Wh, 7,200W, 120V and 240V, expandable to 60kWh. It runs a window unit for most of a hot day, and only it has the output and voltage for central air conditioning, or for a 240V well pump at about 1,000W running and two to three times that to start.
| Unit | Capacity / output | Best for in Louisiana | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| HomePower 3000 (our pick) | 3,072Wh · 3,600W · panels included | Fridge, freezer, fans, Wi-Fi and a CPAP for about a day per charge | Check price → |
| HomePower 3600 Plus | 3,584Wh · 3,600W · to 21kWh | A parish waiting weeks, with essential circuits on a transfer switch | Check price → |
| Solar Generator 5000 Plus | 5,040Wh · 7,200W · 120V/240V · to 60kWh | Central air conditioning and a 240V well pump | Check price → |
▶ Shop the HomePower 3600 Plus, expandable to 21kWh
Our sizing guide works the same arithmetic load by load, and best solar generators for home backup sets the three against the wider market.
Why gas generators are the Gulf Coast’s hidden danger
Every storm season, Louisiana sees carbon-monoxide deaths from gas generators run too close to the house — a real risk when the heat pushes people to move them into a garage or by an open window. A Jackery LiFePO4 station removes that danger entirely: it’s sealed, vents nothing, runs near 30 decibels, and is safe to use indoors with the windows shut. For a larger home around Baton Rouge, or to keep a window AC unit going through the worst of the heat, the Solar Generator 5000 Plus steps up to 5,040Wh and 7,200W — enough to carry heavier loads for longer.
▶ Shop the Solar Generator 5000 Plus — 7,200W, 120V/240V
Heat after the storm is the real danger
An August or September outage in Louisiana is a health problem, not an inconvenience. The wind stops, the sky clears, and heat and humidity build inside a shuttered house. On a slab, with no basement, there is no cooler floor to move down to. That is genuinely dangerous for older residents, small children, and anyone on a medical device.
That decides where the machine lives. A battery station runs safely indoors with the house still shuttered, because it produces zero exhaust and sits near 30 decibels. A gas generator never can. Carbon monoxide from generators run in garages and near open windows kills people after most major Gulf hurricanes, precisely because the heat pushes the machine closer to where the family sleeps.
It also decides what you try to cool. Do not attempt the house. Pick the smallest room you can sleep in, ideally with one window and a door that shuts, put the window unit in it and let the rest of the house be warm. In one closed room the compressor cycles far less, so the real draw sits nearer the bottom of the 400 to 600W band. If a window unit is beyond your battery, a fan in that closed room runs for days on any of these units.
A CPAP is 30 to 60W and 300 to 500Wh a night, which all three units cover for several nights. Our CPAP guide has the detail.
Buy before the cone points at you
Every season runs the same script. A forecast track appears with Louisiana inside it, and within about a day the shelves clear: generators, batteries, fuel cans, bottled water. Stations queue and then run dry. Shipping windows close as carriers stop delivering into the forecast area, so a unit ordered on the Tuesday before a Thursday landfall arrives too late.
Work through this before the season.
- Charge it to full and top it up monthly, from May onward.
- Keep it indoors, in an interior closet or utility room, never a hot garage or a screened porch.
- Decide which outlets and which loads. Fridge, freezer, router, a lamp, the CPAP, one fan. Tape the list to the unit so nobody improvises in the dark.
- Buy heavy duty cords rated for the load. A short 12-gauge cord for the fridge run. Thin cords lose voltage and get warm.
- Test your own fridge on it once, for an hour on a normal day.
- Stage the panel spot. Driveway, carport or back lawn, cables beside the panels, ready the moment the wind drops.
- Keep a battery-powered carbon monoxide alarm, because somebody on your street will run a gas generator too close to a wall, and write the medical device numbers on paper for the fridge door.
▶ Get the HomePower 3000 charged before the next named storm use code DEAL5
Buy before the next cone points at Louisiana
The worst time to shop for backup power is when a system is already spinning in the Gulf and every store in the state is sold out. Set it up at the start of hurricane season and it’s charged and staged when the next storm forms. It’s worth checking the current deals before you need it.
Keep reading: Louisiana solar incentives & costs · Do Mississippi homes need battery backup? · When ERCOT goes down: Texas home backup · Best battery backup for Florida hurricanes · How to size a solar generator for home backup · Best solar generators for home backup · Solar generator backup for a CPAP