Last Wednesday, the YouSolar Team visited Big Sur and Pebble Beach to see two new project sites. Fallen trees were everywhere. Utility crews were still at work. Power was out for five days along the legendary 17 Mile Drive in Pebble Beach.

The storm was still in the air when we shot a pitch for our social media campaign. We felt like storm chasers on the local news.

Watch the campaign pitch shot near the iconic Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, where YouSolar has several projects.

Seeing the devastation along the coast was heartbreaking. Pebble Beach braced 80-mile-per-hour winds. Hundreds-of-years-old California Cypress trees snapped like matchsticks, and the grid went down with the trees.

The recent storm showed the power of a charged-up atmosphere. It made clear the urgent need to slow and then stop further carbon dioxide emissions. It also proved that energy resilience is becoming a must-have.

If power is out for five days, you need more storage – much, much more storage – than traditional solar batteries provide. You may also require a small generator to top off the batteries when there is little or no sun.

On the second day of an outage, you want to do more than run one light and the internet modem. Camping is fun, but not in your own home. The PowerBloc can genuinely power the whole house, allowing our customers to continue their lives uninterrupted.