After a deadly derecho hit Houston with no warning in May, H-E-B’s lights remained on. When Category 1 Hurricane Beryl barreled through the Gulf Coast region, H-E-B’s lights remained on. For years in the face of Texas’ increasingly frequent natural disasters, the beloved grocery chain’s fastidious emergency preparedness has become the subject of widespread awe and praise, particularly when contrasted against the state’s own aging infrastructure.
Much of the reason lies in the large, whirring white box in the grocery store’s back parking lot.
The setup is what’s known as a microgrid, a series of self-sufficient generators built to operate within and independently from a larger electric grid. Enchanted Rock, the company that makes and maintains them, is fittingly based in Houston, where disaster recovery and resiliency is practically engraved into the city’s cracking concrete. Unlike diesel generators, the units, roughly the length, width, and height of a garden shed and capable of being grouped together near-infinitely, run on a natural gas line. Unlike the city’s flickering electric grid, the energy keeps flowing.
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