Solar · Jamaica
Does solar keep the power on during a JPS outage?
Only if it has a battery. A standard grid-tie solar system shuts down the instant JPS goes out — by design, for safety — so panels alone do not keep your house running through a blackout. A hybrid system with battery storage does: it isolates from the grid and runs your essentials off stored solar. In Jamaica, where outages are common, that battery is usually the reason people go solar in the first place.
Why grid-tie solar shuts off in a blackout
A grid-tie inverter is required to stop feeding power the moment the grid drops. This is anti-islanding protection — it prevents your panels back-feeding a dead line and electrocuting a JPS lineman working to restore it. It is not a fault; every compliant grid-tie system behaves this way.
So a panels-only system that brilliantly cuts your bill on a normal day goes dark in an outage exactly like the rest of the street. Lowering the bill and surviving a blackout are two different jobs, and only one of them needs a battery.
How a hybrid system keeps essentials running
A hybrid system adds a battery and an inverter that can disconnect from the grid and form its own supply. When JPS drops, it switches over — typically within a fraction of a second — and your house runs off stored solar and whatever the panels are making at that moment. Our standard build uses the JPS-approved Mutabank 10 kW hybrid inverter.
During the day the panels both power the house and recharge the battery, so a sunny daytime outage is almost a non-event. The constraint is night and prolonged grey weather, which is purely a question of how much battery you carry.
Sizing backup for Jamaican outages
Most customers do not back up the whole house — they size the battery for what genuinely matters in an outage: fans, lights, fridge, internet, phone charging, and usually one AC zone. That covers the typical Jamaican outage comfortably without paying for whole-house capacity you rarely need.
The right battery size depends on how often and how long your area loses power, which varies a lot by parish. We base the sizing on your actual outage pattern and the loads you want to keep on, not a default package — that is part of the on-site assessment.
Quick answers
How long will the battery last in an outage?
It depends on battery size and what you keep running. Sized for essentials — fans, lights, fridge, one AC zone — a typical hybrid carries a normal Jamaican outage and recharges from the panels once the sun is up. We size it to your outage pattern.
Is a hybrid system much more expensive than grid-tie?
Yes, the battery is the single biggest cost difference between a system that only cuts your bill and one that also runs through an outage. Most Jamaican customers still choose hybrid because outages are frequent here.
Can I add a battery to a grid-tie system later?
Sometimes, but it's cleaner and usually cheaper to plan for hybrid from the start, since the inverter and wiring differ. We'll tell you honestly during the assessment whether a later add-on is practical for your setup.
Reviewed by the Something Cool install team · Updated 2026-05-18 · Figures are Jamaica-specific and change with JPS rates — we model your actual bill before quoting.
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