Can a battery keep my building running in a blackout?

Yes, if the system is designed for it. A battery with islanding capability disconnects from the grid during an outage and keeps critical loads running on stored energy and solar. MYNT built the County of Monterey a 1.4 MW microgrid with 2,100 kWh of battery storage that does exactly this. But the design choice matters: a standard grid-tied-only system shuts down in a blackout by code. Resilience has to be engineered in, not assumed.

Battery storage in the 1.4 MW County of Monterey microgrid, designed and built by MYNT

Why do most solar systems go dark in an outage?

By design. A grid-tied inverter must shut off when the grid goes down: anti-islanding protection keeps utility line crews safe from a system back-feeding the wires. So a building with solar panels, or even solar plus a standard battery, still goes dark unless the system was engineered to separate itself from the grid first.

If a salesperson told you "the panels keep you running," check the single-line diagram. Resilience is a switching and controls problem, not a panel problem.

What does islanding-capable design look like?

An islanding system detects the outage, opens its interconnection, and forms its own grid. The battery sets voltage and frequency, solar keeps charging it, and a critical-load panel decides what stays on: refrigeration, servers, life safety, operations. When utility power returns, the system re-synchronizes and reconnects.

That's the architecture MYNT engineered for the County of Monterey: a 1.4 MW microgrid with 2,100 kWh of battery storage, designed in-house and built by our own crews. On a normal day it cuts the power bill. On the bad day, it's the reason the building is still running.