Solar battery backup for hurricane season in Florida

• Hurricane Isaias (October 2026): made landfall near Destin as a Category 2 hurricane on October 9. FPL said about 435,000 Northwest Florida customers were affected; it restored about 45% within 24 hours and more than 95% within four days, and said its underground lines performed far better than overhead lines.
• Hurricane Milton (2024): more than 3.3 million Florida customers lost power. FPL restored more than 2 million customers in 5 days, Duke Energy Florida went from more than 1 million outages to about 30,000 in about five days, and Tampa Electric had nearly 600,000 outages.
• Hurricane Ian (2022): FPL took 8 days to restore essentially all of its more than 2.1 million affected customers. A week after landfall, FPL still had about 91,000 customers out, mostly in Charlotte, Sarasota and Lee counties.

Most homes get power back within days, but the last ones can wait a week or more, and that's the stretch a battery is for.

Not on its own. Grid-tied solar systems shut off automatically when the grid goes down, so power doesn't flow back onto lines that crews are repairing. A battery changes that: when the grid fails, the system disconnects from it and runs your home from the battery, and the panels recharge the battery each day the sun comes out.

Cloudy days after a storm matter. Berkeley Lab found that during Hurricane Florence, cloud cover meant almost no solar for the first three days of an outage that lasted about eight, so a battery should be sized to carry you before the sun returns.

If your home already has panels, see adding a battery to existing solar.

Thinking of cutting the cord entirely? See off-grid solar in Florida for why most homes stay connected.

For the safety rules behind it, see why solar panels don't work in a power outage.

Berkeley Lab's nationwide study of solar plus storage found that one 10 kWh battery with solar fully covered basic needs (refrigeration, lighting, internet) through a 3-day outage almost anywhere in the U.S. Adding heating and cooling changes the math: 10 kWh covered about 86% of those needs on average and 30 kWh about 96%, with lower results where cooling loads are large, including parts of the Southeast.

For scale: the average Florida home used about 1,104 kWh a month in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or about 36 kWh a day, much of it for air conditioning. One 13.5 kWh battery holds a bit more than a third of that, which is why keeping a whole home cool through a hurricane outage takes more than one battery, solar to recharge them each day, or trimming loads to the essentials.

Exactly what each setup covers depends on your home's loads, your AC's size and how much sun follows the storm. An installer sizes it from your bills and the circuits you choose to back up.

Often, yes, if the battery can handle the compressor's startup surge. Tesla rates the Powerwall 3 for a 185 amp motor start and up to 11.5 kW of continuous power, and FranklinWH rates the aPower 2 at 10 kW continuous with the same 185 amp motor start. Smaller modular batteries usually need to be paired to start a central AC unit.

Some older single-speed AC units need a soft starter to keep the startup surge within the battery's limits. Ask your installer to check your compressor before you choose a battery.

• The 2023 Florida Building Code rewrote its residential energy storage section to match the national fire code for batteries (NFPA 855).
• Each battery unit is limited to 20 kWh, and the total in one place is capped: up to 40 kWh in a utility closet or storage space, and up to 80 kWh in a garage, on an exterior wall or outdoors.
• Batteries can't go in bedrooms or in closets that open into them, and units exposed to vehicles need protection.
• Since July 2025, Florida law lets a private provider review residential solar and battery permits, with a decision due within 5 business days.

Some cities add their own rules. Coral Gables, for example, requires battery equipment to be screened from the street.

Not much. FPL, Duke Energy Florida and Tampa Electric credit exported solar at the full retail rate under net metering, so storing your solar instead of exporting it saves little. In Florida, a battery is backup power, not a bill-saving device. None of the three utilities offers a home battery rebate in 2026. See what a home battery costs in Florida and generators vs. solar batteries.