California air board says DWP must control dry lake bed's dust

The California Air Resources Board has ruled that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is solely responsible for controlling the choking dust storms that arise from the dry Owens Lake bed.

The board said the DWP must take additional air pollution control measures on 2.9 square miles of the dry lake, which was drained to provide water to Los Angeles. The powder-fine dust arising from the bed often exceeds federal health standards.

The DWP argues that it has already reduced dust pollution 90% at a cost to ratepayers of $1.2 billion. The additional measures will cost an estimated $400 million, the utility said.

The board's decision Monday aligns with the findings of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District, which had called for the added measures. "It's a complete victory," said Ted Schade, chief enforcement officer for the district.

Still pending, however, is a federal court lawsuit the DWP filed this year to limit its obligation to control dust from the vast alkaline playa, about 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

Schade said the board's decision will become "an important part of our defense in the federal lawsuit. I believe a court will look kindly on the district's position in this matter. After all, it's a public health issue."

James N. Goldstene, the board's executive officer, ruled that the DWP must abide by conditions of 1998 and 2007 settlement agreements with Great Basin to stop the massive dust storms that arose after it opened its aqueduct 99 years ago.

In a statement, DWP spokesman Joe Ramallo said the board's decision to "simply accept Great Basin's position was not unexpected."

The lawsuit accuses Great Basin and Schade of giving "other responsible parties" a "free ride" when it comes to Owens Lake's dust problems, while forcing the utility to waste billions of gallons of water to control dust with shallow flooding.

In addition to Great Basin, the lawsuit names as defendants the California Lands Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as defendants.

The lawsuit seeks to transfer a portion of the costs of controlling dust from city ratepayers to the state lands commission and the federal bureau, which own 10 square miles of the lake bed.

Goldstene pointed out that the city aqueduct diverted nearly all the water flowing into the 110-square-mile eastern Sierra lake, reducing it to a small permanent brine pool surrounded by dry alkali soils. "During high winds significant quantities of sand particles are blown across the lake bed surface, resulting in dust plumes of particulate matter 10 microns or less in diameter," Goldstene said.

Particulate air emissions lodge deep in the lungs, causing respiratory injuries and additional risks to children and the elderly.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

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John McAfee, Unhinged: His Bizarre Breaks From Reality

On November 12, Belizean police announced that anti-virus software tycoon John McAfee was wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of Gregory Faull, his neighbor on a tropical island. The police launched a manhunt in the tiny Central American nation, which is still ongoing.

As the news broke, I was just finishing up a six-month investigation into McAfee’s life for a Wired magazine feature planned for the January issue. In light of the murder and ensuing manhunt, Wired published the feature early, and at expanded length, as a 13-chapter e-book.

The short version: McAfee is a complex and volatile person. I can say that in my two visits to Belize, and in dozens of phone conversations, McAfee was reasonable and lucid. But on a number of occasions, he snapped.

A few weeks before Faull was killed and the police went after McAfee, the retired millionaire called me in the middle of the night. He told me that he was staying at a resort near his villa called Captain Morgan’s Retreat and had gone for a walk on the beach at dusk. In a breathless, spooked tone, he recounted how he’d heard loud motors approaching and instantly knew it was the Gang Suppression Unit (GSU), an elite force within the Belize police that had previously detained McAfee on suspicion of manufacturing drugs.

McAfee took cover on a porch, behind some bushes, but said that GSU members materialized out of the darkness and surrounded him without saying anything. They simply stared at him for hours. “It was freaky, freaky, freaky,” he said. By this time, I was accustomed to his manic energy but in this call, he sounded genuinely unhinged. Take a listen:

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Elmo puppeteer Clash resigns following new sex claims

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind the “Sesame Street” character Elmo, resigned on Tuesday following new allegations that he had sex with an underage boy, adding to an ongoing controversy involving one of America’s most popular children’s brands.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Cecil Singleton is seeking more than $ 5 million in damages from Clash. Singleton claims he met the then-32-year-old puppeteer in 1993 in a gay chat room when he was 15.

It added that on numerous occasions over a period of years Clash engaged in sexual activity with Singleton.

The news came just a week after another man recanted his claims that Clash had sex with him when he was 16 years old.

Clash, 52, said he was leaving Sesame Workshop, the company behind the television show, after nearly 30 years with a very heavy heart.

“I have loved every day of my 28 years working for this exceptional organization. Personal matters have diverted attention away from the important work Sesame Street is doing and I cannot allow it to go on any longer,” he said in a statement issued by his publicist, Risa B. Heller.

“I am deeply sorry to be leaving and am looking forward to resolving these personal matters privately,” he added.

The New York-based Sesame Workshop said it was a sad day for “Sesame Street,” which premiered in 1969 and has been educating and entertaining children for decades with characters such as Elmo, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster.

“Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding Kevin’s personal life has become a distraction that none of us wants, and he has concluded that he can no longer be effective in his job and has resigned from Sesame Street,” the company said in a statement.

A representative declined further comment.

The unnamed 23-year-old man who first accused Clash recanted his claims last week, saying the relationship was consensual. His lawyers were not immediately available to comment on the lawsuit.

Clash had denied the allegations and acknowledged a past relationship with his first accuser. He added the pair were both consenting adults at the time.

“I am a gay man. I have never been ashamed of this or tried to hide it,” Clash said at the time.

Sesame Workshop said the first allegations involving Clash came to its attention in June when the earlier accuser contacted the company by email.

The Elmo character debuted on “Sesame Street” in 1979. While Clash was the third performer to animate the child-like shaggy red monster, Sesame Workshop credits him with turning Elmo into the international sensation he became.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; additional reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Osterman)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Global Update: Meningitis Vaccine Gets Longer Window Without Refrigeration

In what may prove to be a major advance for Africa’s “meningitis belt,” regulatory authorities have decided that a new meningitis vaccine could be stored without refrigeration for up to four days.

The announcement was made last week at a conference in Atlanta of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. While a few days may seem trivial, the hardest part of protecting poor countries is often keeping a vaccine cold while moving it from electrified cities to villages with no power. In antipolio drives, for example, the freezers, generators and fuel needed to make ice for the shoulder bags of vaccinators can cost more than the vaccine.

The new vaccine, MenAfriVac, made in India for 50 cents a dose, was introduced in 2010. In bad years, epidemics during the hot harmattan winds have killed as many as 25,000 Africans and disabled 50,000 more. In Chad this year, vaccination drove down cases to near zero in districts where it was used, while others nearby had serious outbreaks.

Experts decided that the vaccine is safe for four days as long as it stays below 104 degrees.

While temperatures get higher than that in Africa, said Dr. Godwin Enwere, medical director for the Meningitis Vaccine Project, teams normally get the vaccine out of coolers at dawn, drive to villages and finish before the day heats up. Other experts said it should be kept in the shade and monitored with colored paper “dots” that darken after hours in the heat.

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DealBook: Ex-Trader Charged in $276 Million Insider Scheme

Over the last half-decade, as federal authorities secured dozens of insider trading convictions against hedge fund traders, they have tried doggedly to build a case against one of Wall Street’s most influential players: the billionaire stock picker Steven A. Cohen.

On Tuesday, the government appeared to inch closer to that goal. Prosecutors brought charges against a former portfolio manager at the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors in a case that for the first time directly involves Mr. Cohen, the fund’s founder.

Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager at CR Intrinsic, a unit of SAC, was charged with making more than $276 million in a combination of illegal profits and avoided losses by obtaining secret information from a doctor about clinical trials for an Alzheimer’s drug being developed by the companies Elan and Wyeth.

The case is “the most lucrative insider trading scheme ever charged,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, who brought the charges in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

It also draws in Mr. Cohen, whose fund has been in the cross hairs of government investigators since the crackdown on insider trading began. Though not charged or mentioned by name, Mr. Cohen is referred to repeatedly in the government’s court filings as either “Portfolio Manager A” or the “owner” of the funds involved. People briefed on the case confirmed that the reference was to Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Martoma worked closely with Mr. Cohen in buying and selling large blocks of Elan and Wyeth shares, according to a lawsuit also filed on Tuesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The government does not say that Mr. Cohen — who has not been charged in the case — knew that Mr. Martoma had confidential information about the companies’ Alzheimer drug when he bought and sold the stocks.

“Mr. Cohen and SAC are confident that they have acted appropriately and will continue to cooperate with the government’s inquiry,” said Jonathan Gasthalter, a SAC spokesman.

From the middle of an expansive trading floor in SAC’s Stamford, Conn., headquarters, Mr. Cohen, 56, oversees a fund that manages about $13 billion and, including borrowing from banks, possesses about $39 billion in total buying power. The fund, which has about 900 employees, has generated some of the best investment returns on Wall Street, averaging about 30 percent over the last two decades.

Though the case against Mr. Martoma is the first time the government has pointed to Mr. Cohen’s participation in a trade that may have been improper, it is the latest in a spate of insider trading prosecutions of former SAC employees. At least seven former SAC employees have been tied to the government’s multiyear investigation; three of them have pleaded to insider trading while working for Mr. Cohen.

Previous cases involving SAC have highlighted the firm’s unusual structure: traders are allocated money and invest on their own with little direct input from Mr. Cohen. But in this case, Mr. Cohen is said to have had numerous contacts with Mr. Martoma and appeared to collaborate closely with him.

“The law of averages would tell you that all of these instances at one firm are not coincidences,” said Mark Zauderer, a securities lawyer in New York. “People take their cues from the top, and these cases must reflect a culture there.”

F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Martoma, 38, early Tuesday morning at his home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was released on bail after making an appearance in Federal District Court in West Palm Beach. Mr. Martoma, who has been unemployed since leaving SAC in 2010, is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Monday and enter a plea.

“Mathew Martoma was an exceptional portfolio manager who succeeded through hard work and the dogged pursuit of information in the public domain,” said his lawyer, Charles A. Stillman. “What happened today is only the beginning of a process that we are confident will lead to Mr. Martoma’s full exoneration.”

Also accused in the scheme by the Securities Exchange Commission on Tuesday was Sidney Gilman, a neurology professor at the University of Michigan. The S.E.C. said Dr. Gilman, 80, an Alzheimer’s expert who helped oversee the clinical trials for the drug, gave Mr. Martoma the confidential information.

Dr. Gilman is cooperating with the government and has entered into a nonprosecution with the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, meaning that criminal charges will not be brought against him. Marc Mukasey, a lawyer for Dr. Gilman, said that he expected the S.E.C.’s case to be resolved shortly.

Mr. Martoma met Dr. Gilman through the Gerson Lehrman Group, a so-called expert network firm based in New York. Once an obscure pocket of Wall Street, expert network firms became popular among the hedge fund set in the last decade as a way to gain an investment edge. The services linked traders to specialists and consultants in various industries.

But these firms came under scrutiny after the government brought more than a dozen insider trading cases involving these expert networks. In some cases, hedge fund managers paid outside consultants handsome fees for providing confidential information about publicly traded companies. In others, the government charged executives at the expert network firms with knowingly facilitating the exchange of illegal stock tips.

A spokesman for Gerson Lehrman declined to comment. The government’s complaint details how Dr. Gilman hid his communications about the trial from the expert network firm.

Dr. Gilman’s consulting work for Mr. Martoma earned him about $108,000, according to court filings. Based in part on Dr. Gilman’s leaks about positive developments related to the clinical trials of a new Alzheimer’s drug, SAC accumulated a roughly $700 million position in the stocks of Wyeth and Elan, according to the government.

The S.E.C. said that the fund’s owner, Mr. Cohen, took a large position in Wyeth and Elan in his personal portfolio based on Mr. Martoma’s recommendation. Mr. Cohen maintained his holdings even though there was significant debate about the wisdom of such a large position in the companies, the government said.

But in July 2008, as the trials neared completion, Dr. Gilman told Mr. Martoma that patients were experiencing serious side effects, prosecutors say. Afterward, Mr. Martoma e-mailed Mr. Cohen, telling him “it’s important” that they speak. They spoke on the phone for nearly 20 minutes, the government says, and Mr. Martoma told his boss that he was no longer “comfortable” with the investments.

The following day, SAC reversed course. Mr. Cohen’s head trader sold the firm’s entire inventory of roughly 10.5 million shares of Elan and about seven million shares of Wyeth, the government said. Once it had dumped the shares, SAC built a short position in the two stocks, betting their value would drop.

According to the S.E.C., the trader, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Martoma kept the sales confidential. The trade, wrote the head trader in an e-mail to Mr. Cohen, “was executed quietly and efficiently over a four-day period through algos and darkpools” — referring to trades using algorithms and to trading platforms that do not have the same reporting requirements as the stock exchanges — “and booked into two firm accounts that have very limited viewing access.”

After the companies announced the results of the trials, Elan’s stock fell about 42 percent and Wyeth’s about 12 percent.

The trading allowed SAC to avoid about $194 million in losses and earn about $83 million in profits on Elan and Wyeth, according to prosecutors.

At the end of 2008, Mr. Martoma received a bonus of about $9.3 million, the S.E.C. said. Mr. Martoma’s stock picks were less successful in 2009 and 2010, and he received no bonuses then.

According to the government, in 2010 an SAC executive suggested in an e-mail that the firm let Mr. Martoma go, describing him as a “one-trick pony.”

SAC CAPITAL UNDER A MICROSCOPE The firm has been under a cloud since a former employee, Richard Choo-Beng Lee, pleaded guilty in 2009 to insider trading and began helping the government in its investigation. The crimes he confessed to were committed after he left SAC, but he agreed to provide information about his five years at the firm, which ended in 2004.

NAMES	THE CASES
Jonathan Hollander	The former analyst paid more than $220,000 to settle civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing him of trading in his personal account on confidential information about the 2006 takeover of the Albertsons grocery store chain.
Jon Horvath and Michael Steinberg	Mr. Horvath, right, a former technology industry analyst, pleaded guilty in September to participating in a conspiracy that illegally traded in the shares of Dell computer. His boss, the former portfolio manager Mr. Steinberg, has been named as an unindicted co-conspirator but has not been charged in the case. Federal prosecutors contend they were part of a seven-person conspiracy — a “circle of friends” — that earned about $62 million in illegal gains trading on secret tips from executives at publicly traded technology companies.
Donald Longueuil and Noah Freeman	The two former portfolio managers admitted in 2011 to trading on illegal tips about publicly traded technology companies. Mr. Longueuil, right, was swept up in a crackdown on so-called expert networks. He is one of roughly a dozen implicated in the case. Mr. Longueuil is serving a two-and-a-half-year jail term at a federal prison in Otisville, N.Y.; Mr. Freeman, who is cooperating with prosecutors, has yet to be sentenced.
Mathew Martoma	The former trader at CR Intrinsic, a unit of the hedge fund, was charged with making about $276 million in combined profits and avoided losses by obtaining confidential information about a drug trial for an Alzheimer’s drug developed by the pharmaceutical companies Elan and Wyeth.

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An ethics debate over embryos on the cheap

Dr. Ernest Zeringue was looking for a niche in the cutthroat industry of fertility treatments.

He seized on price, a huge obstacle for many patients, and in late 2010 began advertising a deal at his Davis, Calif., clinic unheard of anywhere else: Pregnancy for $9,800 or your money back.

That's about half the price for in vitro fertilization at many other clinics, which do not include money-back guarantees. Typically, insurance coverage is limited and patients pay again and again until they give birth — or give up.

Those patients use their own eggs and sperm — or carefully select donors when necessary — and the two are combined in a petri dish to create a batch of embryos. Usually one or two are then transferred to the womb. Any embryos left over are the property of the customers.

Zeringue sharply cuts costs by creating a single batch of embryos from one egg donor and one sperm donor, then divvying it up among several patients. The clinic, not the customer, controls the embryos, typically making babies for three or four patients while paying just once for the donors and the laboratory work.

People buying this option from Zeringue must accept concessions: They have no genetic connection to their children, and those children will probably have full biological siblings born to other parents.

Inside the industry, Zeringue's strategy for making embryos on the cheap has spurred debate about the ethical boundaries of creating life.

"I am horrified by the thought of this," said Andrew Vorzimer, a Los Angeles fertility lawyer alarmed that a company — not would-be parents — controls embryos. "It is nothing short of the commodification of children."

Other experts say they see no problem with the arrangement, although the business model and the issues it raises are to be discussed at a meeting in January of the ethics committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Zeringue said the concerns are overblown.

Most of his customers have run out of money and patience by the time they come to his clinic, he said: "They're kind of at the end of the line."

::

Natosha Dukart and her husband, Brad, an oil field worker, spent more than $100,000 without producing a child. They ran up credit cards, flipped houses and moved four times to help finance round after round of IVF.

It was never clear if the problem was her eggs or his sperm.

After eight unsuccessful attempts, Natosha took to the Internet and found Zeringue's clinic, California IVF: Davis Fertility Center Inc., and its embryo program, California Conceptions. With no financial risk, there was nothing to lose.

"It was an easy choice," Natosha said.

She sent their photographs to the clinic and filled out a form saying they wanted a Caucasian baby. Two months later, they received a profile of an embryo the clinic had frozen in storage. Both donors had brown eyes and healthy family histories.

The Dukarts liked the description and this February traveled from their home near Calgary to Davis in an attempt to get Natosha pregnant.

"It was just as emotional as it was with our own embryos," she said.

Last month, at age 39, she gave birth to a healthy 7-pound girl with blue eyes and dark hair. The couple named her Milauna.

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Mark Cuban Calls Facebook a 'Time Waster'

Mark Cuban isn’t done criticizing Facebook. After saying last week the social network had “blown up” and alienated businesses by limiting their access to users’ news feeds, the Dallas Mavericks owner and tech entrepreneur is now calling Facebook a “time suck” that needs to learn its humble place in the media landscape.

Cuban posted the comments to his personal blog to clarify comments he made last week to ReadWrite on how Facebook aggressively filters posts from business pages to users’ news feeds. He wrote that Facebook is a “time waster” for people too anxious to “talk to the person next to you.” As such, Facebook should not bother filtering posts from business owners like Cuban:

FB doesn’t seem to want to accept that its best purpose in life is as a huge time suck platform that we use to keep up with friends, interests and stuff. I think that they are over-thinking what their network is all about .

Being a time suck that people enjoy is a good thing… [But] who really appreciates that some posts rise to the top of their newsfeed because some folks they used to work with and are still friends with shared a baby picture ? … In a perfect FB world every post enters the friends/like/subscriber’s timeline. If they log in and want to spend the time searching their timeline they see it, if not, not.

The Facebook news feed has been algorithmically favoring selected content, like the baby picture Cuban mentioned, since its launch in 2006. Facebook programmers are constantly tweaking the feed — to please users, they say — and in September began filtering page posts more aggressively after complaints about spam. This meant that business owners like Cuban tend to reach fewer users with each post and must buy “promoted post” advertising from Facebook if they want to reach even more.

Filling the role of “time suck” is actually a competitive job for properties like Facebook, which has made billions in profits replacing earlier time sucks like MySpace, Friendster, and AOL. Facebook itself faces competition from the likes of Twitter and Google, which is partly why it spends so much time trying to improve the relevance of its news feed.

It’s odd that Cuban, of all people, doesn’t appreciate the complexity involved in being a “time waster.” His NBA team the Mavericks spends inordinate time and money trying to be a compelling “time suck” for fans with nothing better to do than watch strangers play basketball for hours on end. The Mavericks hone elaborate on-court strategies, release and acquire highly skilled players, and strike complex broadcast and merchandizing arrangements. They don’t let just any random dribbler onto their home court to entertain the fans. Facebook works the same way.

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Aussie rockers AC/DC’s music to be sold on iTunes

NEW YORK (Reuters) – AC/DC‘S entire catalogue, including 20 studio and live albums and three compilations will be available on iTunes for the first time worldwide, Columbia Records and Apple said on Monday.

Until now the Australian heavy metal group that was formed by two brothers, Angus and Malcolm Young, in 1973, had refused to put their music on Apple Inc’s online music store.

“AC/DC’s thunderous and primal rock and roll has excited fans for generations with their raw and rebellious brand of music, which also resonates with millions of new fans discovering AC/DC everyday,” Columbia Records and Apple, said in a statement announcing the deal.

“Their growing legion of fans will now experience the intensity of AC/DC’s music in a way that has never been heard before,” they added.

The group’s 1976 debut album “High Voltage,” its classic “Back In Black” and 2008′s “Black Ice” are among the albums available on iTunes.

All the of music has been mastered for iTunes and fans can download entire albums or individual songs.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Really?: The Claim: Eye Problems Can Cause Headaches in Children

Really?

Anahad O’Connor tackles health myths.

THE FACTS When a child complains of frequent headaches, many pediatricians order an eye exam. “In some pediatric ophthalmology practices, it’s a daily occurrence,” said Dr. Zachary Roth, a resident in ophthalmology at Albany Medical Center in New York.

Often, a child may experience headaches while reading or doing schoolwork, leading parents to think the child needs glasses. But are eye problems really a cause of childhood headaches?

In a recent study, Dr. Roth and his colleagues examined 158 children under age 18 who were referred to ophthalmologists for frequent headaches. Then, they evaluated the children’s medical records and looked at the results of earlier vision exams.

Ultimately, the researchers could not find any significant link between headaches and diagnoses of vision problems. In three-quarters of the subjects, the headaches went away over time, both in those who received new glasses and those who did not.

The study, which was presented at a recent American Academy of Ophthalmology conference, was not designed to look for causes of the headaches. But there were “quite a few” children with family histories of migraine, Dr. Roth said. Sinus problems and stress headaches also appeared to be common issues, he added.

“I think the take-away message is that it’s very unlikely for headaches to be caused by an eye problem,” he said. “The experience of all the ophthalmologists we talked to is that it almost never seems to be related to the eyes, so it’s probably more fruitful to investigate other causes.”

THE BOTTOM LINE Vision problems are often blamed for childhood headaches, but in reality, the two are rarely related.

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Solar Power as Solution for Storm-Darkened Homes

When Hurricane Sandy wiped out the power in areas like coastal Long Island and the Jersey Shore, what should have been beacons of hope — hundreds of solar panels glinting from residential rooftops — became symbols of frustration.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

R. David Gibbs of the nonprofit group Solar One directed volunteers in an installation at the Rockaway Beach Surf Club.

A blog about energy and the environment.

Despite the popular perception that installing solar panels takes a home “off the grid,” most of those systems are actually part of it, sending excess power to the utility grid during the day and pulling electricity back to run the house at night. So when the storm took down power lines and substations across the Northeast, safety systems cut the power in solar homes just like everywhere else.

“Here’s a $70,000 system sitting idle,” said Ed Antonio, who lives in the Rockaways in Queens and has watched his 42 panels as well as those on several other houses in the area go unused since the power went out Oct. 29. “That’s a lot of power sitting. Just sitting.”

Yet there are ways to tap solar energy when the grid goes down, whether by adding batteries to a home system or using the kinds of independent solar generators that have been cropping up in areas hard-hit by the storm.

In the Rockaways, where nearly 14,000 customers still had no power as of Monday morning, volunteers set up a makeshift solar charging station between a car roof and a shopping cart. A multipanel, battery-tied system is helping fuel a relief center’s operations.

In the storm’s wake, solar companies have been donating equipment across New York and other stricken areas to function as emergency power systems now and backups in the longer term. It is important, executives say, to create smaller, more decentralized ways of generating and storing electricity to help ease strain on the grid in times of high demand or failure.

“The grid won’t evolve into something more distributed and fault-tolerant overnight — it’s still dependent upon a centralized system,” said Ben Tarbell, vice president for products at SolarCity, a leading installer that has donated generators after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and is developing a battery backup system for its customers. “But the components are starting to come together.”

Generally, home systems like Mr. Antonio’s are engineered to feed electricity from the roof array through an inverter and into the home’s electrical panel, sending the excess to the broader electric grid. But during a failure, the inverter automatically shuts down the system to guarantee that no electricity is flowing into equipment that workers will be trying to fix. The shutdown also ensures that the system’s current will sync with the grid when power is restored and guards against damaging the lines.

Certain systems allow solar panels to run a household directly during prolonged power failures, generally combined with battery storage to keep the power functioning around the clock. Those require installing a separate electrical panel and a more complicated inverter that would switch the flow of electricity entirely over to the house, perhaps to a few critical circuits to run, say, the refrigerator, some lights, television and minimal heat.

“You size the battery system to go with that, and then the system will work just on those dedicated circuits,” said Tony Clifford, chief executive of Standard Solar, an installer based in Maryland.

The cost of adding battery storage to an existing system can range from $500 to $30,000, depending on how large the solar array is and how much the customer wants to be able to run.

Although demand for battery backup is not yet widespread, interest tends to go up after storms, said David Panico, senior vice president of the industrial power group at SunWize, a solar supplier that provided a low-cost mobile system to the Rockaway Beach Surf Club, a hub of that area’s relief effort.

But a drawback is that residents have to figure out where to put the batteries — a particular quandary for those with homes vulnerable to flooding.

So some are looking at electric vehicles as potential backup energy sources instead. In some cases, a car could fuel a house for days on a single charge.

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