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On the evening of June 29, 2012, a derecho — a wall of straight-line winds moving like a freight train — crossed Virginia in barely an hour and knocked out power for well over a million Dominion Energy customers, some of them for close to a week, in a heat wave that pushed past 100°F. Virginia sits inside PJM Interconnection, the regional grid that coordinates power from the Midwest to the coast. But PJM moves electricity along high-voltage transmission lines; when a storm snaps the local poles feeding your street, the regional grid can’t help you at all. That is exactly the gap a home battery fills. If you’re comparing Virginia solar quotes, it’s the part most installers skip — a grid-tied rooftop array goes dark in that outage too.
Why your panels shut off the moment Dominion does
It surprises people, but a standard rooftop system stops producing the instant the grid fails. Anti-islanding rules force it to, so utility crews aren’t working on lines your array is quietly back-feeding. Whether you’re served by Dominion Energy Virginia across Richmond, Arlington, and Virginia Beach or by Appalachian Power down around Roanoke, the effect is identical: the sun can be blazing the morning after a storm and your panels sit idle while the refrigerator warms up. A battery is the only thing that lets you actually use your own solar during an outage.
What a Virginia home needs to ride out a derecho
You don’t have to run the whole house — just the handful of things that matter when it’s 98°F and the grid is gone. A fridge pulls about 150W, ten LED bulbs roughly 50W together, a router near 10W, and phone charging about 20W. Add a fan and you’re near 300W of steady draw. The Solar Generator HomePower 3000 (about 3,072Wh and 3,600W) covers that for one to two days and ships with solar panels, so it refills mid-outage instead of draining to empty.
▶ See the HomePower 3000 solar generator use code DEAL5
If cooling is non-negotiable in that Virginia heat, or you want to carry heavier loads through a winter ice storm, the Solar Generator 5000 Plus steps up to 5,040Wh and 7,200W with both 120V and 240V and expands to 60kWh — enough to run central AC alongside the rest of the house.
▶ View the Solar Generator 5000 Plus
Both are LiFePO4, run near 30 decibels, and vent nothing — so unlike a gas generator they’re safe to run indoors with the windows shut and the AC gone.
Sort it out before the next straight-line wind
The 2012 derecho gave almost no warning, and Virginia’s summer storm season and winter ice both tend to arrive faster than a hardware-store run. The worst time to shop for backup is when the forecast already looks bad and shelves are bare. Set it up at the start of the season and it’s charged and staged when the next system rolls through. It’s worth checking the current deals before then.
Keep reading: Virginia solar incentives & costs · How to keep the lights on in a Maryland outage · How to keep the lights on in a West Virginia outage