New normal? The US has suffered a major power outage EVERY month of 2026

Power outages have hit the US every month so far this year, driven mostly by severe weather. January and February brought winter storms that cut power to hundreds of thousands of customers each month. March saw storms knock out power to over a million customers across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. April brought tornadoes to Illinois, May triggered an emergency order to bring in backup generation during a Mid-Atlantic heat wave, and June saw hundreds of thousands more lose power in storms. Roughly 70 percent of outages are tied to severe weather, and much of the rest comes from equipment failures — often in grid infrastructure dating back to the 1960s and 70s that hasn't been substantially upgraded since.

Homeowners who got through these outages with the least disruption tended to have solar panels and battery storage rather than relying only on the grid. Solar can keep running during a daytime outage, and a home battery can carry power through the night. Some electric vehicles can also send power back into the house through bidirectional charging.

None of this depends on federal policy. Even as some federal clean-energy incentives get rolled back, state and utility programs are still offering rebates for home batteries and EVs in places like California. If outages like these keep happening on a monthly basis rather than once a year, it may be worth checking what incentives your own state currently offers for solar, battery storage, or bidirectional-capable EVs.