Hurricane backup power in West Palm Beach, Florida

How do I keep power on during a hurricane outage in West Palm Beach?

You need storage and backup switching — solar alone shuts down when the grid does. Decide three things before hurricane season: which circuits you actually need, how many days you are planning for, and whether cooling is on the list. In Palm Beach County that last question drives the size of the system more than anything else.

County
Palm Beach
Solar alone in an outage
Produces nothing
Local code
Standard Florida wind-load requirements
Florida Building Commission

Last verified August 16, 2026

Why solar alone leaves you dark

A grid-tied inverter stops the instant it stops sensing the grid. This is anti-islanding protection, and it exists so that a utility crew repairing a line they believe is dead is not exposed to a rooftop system energising it. It is a safety requirement, and it means a bright afternoon during an outage produces nothing without storage.

Decide the scope before you shop

  1. 1

    Essential loads

    Refrigeration, connectivity, some lighting, medical equipment. Modest output, and achievable with a single unit for many homes.

  2. 2

    Essential loads plus one cooling zone

    Backing up a single mini-split so there is somewhere cool to sleep. Often the best value decision in the whole project.

  3. 3

    Whole home including central air conditioning

    Drives the output requirement sharply upward and usually means multiple units. Worth pricing explicitly rather than assuming.

What is specific to West Palm Beach

West Palm Beach, Florida at a glance
CountyPalm Beach
Predominant electric utilityFlorida Power & Light
Net-metering rulesFlorida PSC Rule 25-6.065 applies (investor-owned utility)
Permitting authorityCity of West Palm Beach Development Services
Building code zoneStandard Florida Building Code wind-load requirements for the local design wind speed

Your utility: Florida Power & Light

As an investor-owned utility, FPL offers net metering under Florida PSC Rule 25-6.065. A customer-owned renewable system must be sized so that it is not expected to produce more than 115% of the home’s annual consumption, and the rule also limits generating capacity relative to the service capacity. Exported energy is tracked as a kWh credit that offsets later consumption, with any remaining credit settled annually at the utility’s avoided-cost rate rather than the retail rate.

Size your backup properly

Select the loads you want running and see whether a given battery configuration can carry them, and for how long.

Open the backup calculator

Recharging during hurricane season in West Palm Beach

Atlantic hurricane season runs June to November. Across those six months the model puts output in West Palm Beach at an average of 131.5 kWh per kW installed per month, which is 0% above the year-round monthly average, with the weakest month of the season at 118.8 kWh. That matters for backup because a battery is only as useful as its ability to refill: during a multi-day outage the array, not the grid, is what recharges it.

Common questions

Will my panels survive the storm?

Properly permitted rooftop solar in Florida is engineered to the wind-load requirements for its location. Correctly installed systems generally come through intact. Failures usually trace to attachment and roof condition rather than to the panels.

Can solar recharge the battery during the outage?

Yes, if the system is configured for backup. Expect little production for a day or two either side of landfall, then improving output as the weather clears. That daily refill is what turns a multi-day outage from an endurance problem into a budget.

Is a generator a better choice?

For whole-home power over several days, a generator is usually cheaper and runs as long as it has fuel — which is the hardest thing to obtain after a storm. A battery is silent, automatic, needs no fuel and does something useful the rest of the year.

Sources

What each source supports on this page, and when we last verified it. Every source we use, with its freshness policy, is listed in the source register.

  1. Florida Building Code — high-velocity hurricane zone and wind-borne debris provisions

    Florida Building Commission

    Wind-load and permitting requirements applying to rooftop solar installations in Florida, including the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

    Verified August 16, 2026

  2. Powerwall 3 Datasheet

    Tesla

    Powerwall 3 energy capacity, continuous output, and warranty term.

    Verified August 16, 2026

  3. IQ Battery 5P data sheet

    Enphase Energy

    IQ Battery 5P usable capacity, continuous and peak output, chemistry and warranty.

    Verified August 16, 2026

  4. PVWatts® Calculator v8 API

    National Renewable Energy Laboratory

    Modelled annual AC energy production for a given location, tilt, azimuth and loss assumption.

    Verified August 17, 2026 · Production values not yet ingested in this environment. See scripts/ingest-solar-resource.ts. NREL became the National Laboratory of the Rockies and retired nrel.gov on 29 May 2026; this API now lives on developer.nlr.gov, per https://developer.nlr.gov/docs/nlr-domain-transition/. The organisation name is kept as "National Renewable Energy Laboratory" because that is how the PVWatts model is cited in the literature.

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