Home generator sales are booming with mass outages, climate change and COVID

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/31/ [login to see] /home-generator-sales-boom-power-outages-climate-change
Outside Christopher Glenn's house in the small Oregon community of Melrose, a white metal box sits next to the garage. The home standby generator was installed after a long outage in 2019.

"We had a major snowstorm that brought about 3 feet of snow to our backyard, and we were without electricity for approximately a week," says Glenn.

His spouse works remotely and couldn't work without electricity. They also own an organic tea business that was shut down by the outage.

"A customer in Ohio or Florida or Texas, they don't care if we're without power out here in Oregon. They want to know why we're not responding," says Glenn.

Beyond snowstorms, he's also concerned about outages during the wildfire season. As in California, Oregon utilities sometimes turn off electricity so power lines don't spark fires.

Around the U.S., climate change is bringing more intense and frequent extreme weather that often means mass power outages, including devastating, high-profile ones like that in Texas last year.