More than 2.5 million Americans depend on durable medical equipment, such as oxygen delivery systems, ventilators, and dialysis machines.
For these vulnerable customers, even brief power interruptions can cause their equipment to malfunction, and longer outages can be life-threatening, if power isn’t restored quickly.
Yet the U.S. power grid is aging and under increasing pressure, struggling to keep up with rising electricity demand and extreme weather events. As a result, power outages are becoming more frequent and severe. The Department of Energy warns that blackouts could increase 100-fold by 2030 and recent studies show the severity of outages has grown 20% annually since 2019.
Battery storage systems give medically vulnerable customers reliable backup power when the grid fails, automatically activating within a few seconds to keep critical medical devices running. By providing this layer of energy resilience, batteries protect those most at risk while helping utilities enhance reliability and equity for medically dependent and underserved communities.
Read more: Utility Dive
