Demand for generators grows amid Texas outages. But who can afford them?

In a large activities room in the BakerRipley Kashmere senior center in northeast Houston, local seniors gathered around circular tables, chatting and eating. Over the decades, many have weathered a barrage of Gulf Coast storms that brought catastrophic floods, destructive winds and dayslong power outages.

“I’ve been through maybe five hurricanes,” said 73-year-old Emily Barriere, wearing a blue baseball cap. “I lost everything.”

Since Harvey flooded her home in 2017, she’s been living in a nearby apartment for seniors. That’s where she was when the most recent disaster hit: Hurricane Beryl. 

She remembers the sound of the wind when the storm hit — different from prior storms. “Like a whistle,” she said.

The lights flickered and went out. She grabbed her radio, phone and a lamp. “I just started praying. I said, ‘Lord, just don’t let it do us too bad,'” she said.

Roughly 2.3 million electric customers lost power like her. The July heat crept in during the electricity-free days that followed. 

“It wasn’t nice. But what could I do but try to bear it?” Barriere said. “And let me tell you, it’s not the kind of heat that we were brought up in. This is a different kind of heat now.”

She said ambulances came for some of her neighbors who were on oxygen or couldn’t take the rising temperatures. 

“Where I live, we didn’t have a generator,” she said. “I don’t understand it. It’s a senior place for seniors that have done paid their dues. It’s ridiculous. That generator stuff, it’s ridiculous.”

For some, outages continued more than a week after the storm hit. Seven of the 20 recorded Beryl-related deaths in Harris County were due to heat exposure from the power outages, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. All were people age 50 or over. 

Emergencies like this spike demand for generators, especially among older Americans. And as the grid has become less reliable in Texas, demand for generators has grown — especially in Houston, according to Aaron Jagdfeld, CEO of Generac Power Systems, a major generator manufacturer. 

“Since the February 2021 freeze, it’s really been a very active market,” he said. “For most people … every time they have another outage, they get closer and closer to saying, ‘That’s it. I’m ready to spend money to solve this problem because I can’t depend on whoever my utility is to provide power.'”

In Texas, in-home consultations for standby Generac generators were five times more frequent in July, when Beryl hit, than the average of the previous six months.  

“And so we see people getting to that tipping point in Houston much more quickly, probably right now, than anywhere else in the country,” Jagdfeld said.  

Though generators are not necessarily exclusive to high-income families (Generac said its customers’ median home value is around $450,000), prices can range from hundreds of dollars for portables to many thousands for standby generators, putting them out of reach for many people who are most vulnerable during outages.

“The great majority of low- and moderate-income people don’t have any money to go out and buy a generator, said Margo Weisz, executive director of the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute.

“There was also sort of a run on generators during Beryl … and then a lot of elderly people don’t even have cars to get somewhere to go get a generator,” she said. Also, elderly and low-income people are more likely to live in apartment complexes, she said, where there are more limitations on generator use.

Nonprofits have filled some of the gaps, offering a limited number of generators to seniors after Hurricane Beryl. Hyunja Norman works with Korean-American seniors as executive director of the Houston nonprofit Woori Juntos. She delivered ice and Gatorade to a senior apartment complex without power in the days after the storm.

“Many people left to go to their relatives … but the most vulnerable people cannot. [They have] no family here,” she said.  

Norman said she was heartbroken as she watched a very sick, older woman at the complex being fanned by her husband to try to cool her off. 

Her group was able to crowdsource a small generator, fan and air conditioner to create a common area where people could cool off. But the elderly wife was still hospitalized. That’s why for seniors, Norman said, backup power is essential. 

“We are pushing generators in all senior housing. They need to have a generator,” she said. 

As the city and state face power reliability issues during extreme weather, more needs to be done to make generators accessible, she said.  

“Generators are a lifesaving tool in our disaster-preparedness toolkit,” said Elaine Morales-Díaz, policy director at the local disaster-relief nonprofit Connective. She said until the grid is more resilient for all residents, generators should be more widely available.

“How can we increase access to them until we are able to build a more resilient infrastructure and system for our community?” she said. “It’s a matter of life and death here.”