Tiburon Peninsula sees a surge in interest in backup power systems amid blackouts

On the Tiburon Peninsula and across the state, there has been a surge in demand for battery storage systems and generators since last year, when PG&E announced it would start to pre-emptively cut power to prevent wildfires sparked by its aging equipment, which caused some of the state’s largest and most deadly blazes, including the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County that burned more than 153,000 acres and killed 85 people. The rush for backup energy systems accelerated after a massive public-safety power shutoff, as they’re called, that spanned across 37 counties in October 2019, affecting some 3 million people. That outage left residents in Tiburon, Belvedere and Strawberry in the dark for up to three days in some neighborhoods. (Elliot Karlan photo / For The Ark)

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