After Hurricane Sandy, Need for Backup Power Hits Home
Backup power generator sales have surged in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and other big storms. Go-it-alone solutions are moving faster than needed electric grid upgrades.
"We're trying to create our own awareness, to create our own storm, if you will," Jagdfeld told Wall Street analysts last Thursday in announcing an 85 percent increase in profits for the quarter. "It's a really bad strategy to sit around and watch the Weather Channel. That's not a strategy for a business."
"It's not?" deadpanned Christopher Glynn of Oppenheimer. After all, the company points to weather—and the state of the power grid—whenever it explains its financial results or its data showing 20 percent average annual growth in market penetration of home standby generators over the past decade.
"We believe continued underinvestment in the electric grid, an aging population, an increased reliance on uninterruptible power and data, and more severe weather
