So you’ve built your own microgrid, batteries included. Now what are you going to do with all that power? When the grid goes down, there are a few priorities you want to focus on. Obvious choices are heat, water, and refrigeration for your food. Another less obvious but just as vital choice is medical devices. Those relying on medical equipment need a backup plan for power they can count on. Follow all that up with sump pumps, electric stoves, air conditioning if you’re in a hot climate, and you’ve got most of the basics covered. Another priority for power is your communications.
During major outages like the 2003 Northeast blackout, Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and the 2021 Texas freeze, communications were affected. People were cut off as power died to internet and telephone infrastructure. There’s only so much battery power devoted to backing up phone and internet services, and only some areas have generators for backup power.
The same thing happened during the historic blackouts in Spain and Portugal in 2025. Even with generators at 70% of the locations on Vodafone’s Spanish network, traffic dropped to 20%. The network was paralyzed.
But Spaniards and Portuguese who had Starlink fared well. Mario Nawfal posted on X.com that Starlink usage was 60% higher in Spain at times during the outage.
🇪🇸 STARLINK USAGE SKYROCKETED DURING SPANISH BLACKOUTS
Spain and Portugal’s power went poof last week – and mobile networks totally flopped.
But guess what didn’t crash? Elon’s space WiFi.
Starlink use jumped 35% over average, and 60% higher in Spain by Tuesday as phone… https://t.co/Fl50JL5shH pic.twitter.com/B4ayjNj3DW
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 5, 2025
Musk wrote, “Starlink still worked in Spain and Portugal when the whole countries lost power! Worth having @Starlink as backup, even if you have a gigabit landline.”
Starlink is a satellite internet service offered by SpaceX that can (or will soon) provide users with internet from nearly everywhere on Earth (not China, Russia, Afghanistan, Syria, Belarus, or North Korea).
Setting up Starlink is easy. You get a box in the mail with a dish and a router; you point the dish at the sky somewhere with an unobstructed view, plug it all in, set it up with the Starlink app on your phone, and you have internet and Wi-Fi. You can travel with a certain version of Starlink (the additional service is called Roam), so if you want to have it at home, then take it across the country in your RV, and then put it on your boat, you can.
Satellite internet isn’t really new, and there are other services available and attempting to catch up. But what Starlink has done that others have not been capable of doing is to put thousands of satellites into orbit. The company explains:
Starlink operates the world’s largest satellite constellation, with over 6,750 [ed. note, Starlink recently launched its 10,000th satellite] satellites currently in orbit, serving millions of active customers around the globe with high-speed, low-latency internet. As the world’s largest satellite constellation operator, we are deeply committed to space safety. Starlink operates with the most conservative maneuver thresholds in the industry, publicly shares its high-precision ephemerides, and has introduced a space safety service to ease coordination with other satellite operators and launch service providers.
With the internet increasingly important to daily life, consider a backup system that doesn’t rely on your local power grid and can be run successfully on the power in your pantry.
Action Line: If the internet isn’t a critical part of your job, maybe you don’t need a satellite backup, but you may want to consider a satellite phone. Read more about satellite phones and internet here. And click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
Read the entire series here.
