In April 2025, a series of five tornadoes swept through North Texas, knocking out utility power for thousands of residents. Fortunately, Gregg and his wife had Briggs & Stratton backup batteries installed by East Texas Generator (ETG) to rely on.
Before retiring, Gregg had spent 55 years in the utility industry and supervised two large switching centers that required commercial grade backup batteries. Needless to say, he was familiar with the technology and decided he wanted residential batteries for his home. Gregg and his wife have a 2,900-square-foot all-electric house that’s situated on 100 acres of land and surrounded by a flock of sheep.
“We live in a remote area that doesn’t have access to natural gas or propane so a standby generator wasn’t an option for us. Most of our outages last two to six hours but we also get a lot of momentary ones so it’s important for us to have reliable backup energy.”
Gregg
Working with Shannon Smith, general manager with ETG, Gregg had a stack of three Briggs & Stratton SimpliPHI® 6.6 batteries installed, providing nearly 20 kWh of battery backup power.
“When the first tornado came through, the power went down and our batteries instantaneously kicked in. I didn’t know how long the outage would be so I started to shed load to preserve our battery power.”
Gregg
Gregg turned the HVAC off, shut off lights and took other small steps. While the couple was mindful of their energy usage, they did use their microwave and oven to heat food and kept their exterior security lights on, along with the water heater, TV, two chest freezers and two refrigerators.
Before going to bed, Gregg checked the battery power and saw he had 85% remaining. In the morning, the batteries were at 52%. The couple shed more load and, when the utility power came back on later that evening, the batteries still had 17% left.
“We had been running on battery power for more than 28 hours and there were no issues. In fact, we even took hot showers in the midst of the storms. The batteries basically powered our entire house for more than a day. Once utility power came back, they automatically charged from the grid and, within an hour, we were back at 100% and ready in case there was another outage.”
Gregg
The Briggs & Stratton battery stack is installed on the couple’s back porch and is a topic of conversation when guests come over.
“Most people haven’t seen a battery stack before, so I explain what it is. I like the look of the install because it’s very clean but, better yet, I have a great story to share about making it through five tornadoes with the battery back up power. That’s a pretty cool tale for a utility guy.”
Gregg
"My wife and I were tired of bringing down a portable generator with extension cords from our shop to power refrigeration during power outages. I had contacted several generator companies but ETG was the only company to contact me back quickly. We set up a meeting at the ranch fast and met. I expressed my concerns about adding a propane gen set up and Shannon from ETG said he had a new setup I might be interested in. We liked the battery proposal and decided to go with it. This proved to be the right decision. Throughout the entire installation and setup, Shannon was on site to answer questions / concerns. ETG installation men were also great to work with. It was a very clean and professional installation. Since getting the new system online, Shannon has been here three times to get me set up on the apps to monitor how it's working. This took a couple of hours but he hung in there with me. I'm not really savvy on smartphone use but we got it done and it works great. ETG and Shannon are great to work with and I want to give a big shoutout to his crew because they are pros."
Gregg
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