Generator Dealer in Daytona Beach Florida

If you live here, you’ve probably heard how Daytona become “The Most Famous Beach in the World.”  It’s a quintessentially Florida story of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, wide beaches, great weather, and fast cars. Founded in the 1870s, Daytona Beach really took off in 1889 when Henry Flagler purchased the Ormond Hotel and incorporated Daytona’s newly built rail line into his Florida East Coast Railway, opening the Florida Peninsula to wealthy vacationers seeking respite from northern winters.

In 1902, when the Motor City was still a gleam in Henry Ford’s eye, Daytona’s 23-mile stretch of hard-packed, coral-colored sand beaches became a mecca for automotive pioneers looking for a place to test and race their newest inventions — sort of a Kitty Hawk for cars.  And when the first land speed record was clocked along Ormond Beach at 92.307 mph in 1904, motorsports racing was born.

Drivers and machines from around the world tested themselves against Daytona Beach’s “Miracle Mile” until the final 276.816 mph record was set in 1935. Racing moved off the beach, onto road courses, and by 1959, Daytona was the home of NASCAR and the Daytona 500 International Speedway. And while much has changed since 1902, automobiles are still permitted on restricted areas of many of the city’s public beaches – but at a maximum speed of only 10 mph.

Like much of Florida, the climate is humid subtropical — 230 sunny days each year, with mild, snowless winters and hot, humid summers – although thanks to sea breezes, summer temperatures rarely go above 90 degrees. Given our location, it’s no surprise that we get 50+ inches of rain each year, especially during summer and fall when hurricanes pass nearby as they travel up Florida’s Atlantic coast or cross the state from the Gulf Coast. Their high wind and heavy rain cause serious damage and flooding, and that means widespread power outages.

Tropical Storm Elsa knocked out power to 26,000 after making landfall in Cedar Key, including more than 1,000 in Daytona. And when Hurricane Mathew pummeled Volusia County from 30 miles offshore for more than 12 hours in October 2016, it wreaked serious havoc on the power grid. More than and left 90%of Volusia County and 85% of Flagler County — 297,000 customers in all – without electricity, many for a week or longer. Less than a year later, Hurricane Irma’s center passed within 80 miles of Daytona Beach, once again leaving close to 300,000 customers without power.

And although tornadoes are usually the strongest in the spring, in this part of Florida, they can — and do — happen any time of the year. For example, in August 2020, an EF2 tornado with 100+ mph winds tore through Deland, destroying homes, power lines, and transmission equipment, leaving more than 11,000 homes and businesses without power for more than a week. We’ve even seen major tornado outbreaks in late December.

Fortunately, Florida’s power grid doesn’t experience the type of large-scale disruptions that have happened in Texas, but we’ve had a few serious wake-up calls. On February 26, 2008, for example, an incorrect switch setting at FPL’s Turkey Point Nuclear Plant snowballed into a power outage that stretched from Key West all the way north to Orlando and Daytona. Ultimately at least 4 million homes and businesses were affected, including the Daytona Metro, as bordering grids sapped energy in a domino effect. It also shut down two nuclear power plants and raised concerns about Florida Power and Light’s grid maintenance practices.

If you don’t have an automatic backup home generator, your options are limited when the power goes out for any length of time.

You can wait for it to come back on, but that means no cooking, no lights, no refrigeration, and no air conditioning – especially brutal during Florida’s hot, humid summers. Without a backup generator for your home, there’s no TV, no phone chargers, no power for medical devices, and often no water.  When outages are widespread, hunting down an available hotel room – or a kind-hearted friend with power who can take you in – is a big gamble, especially when roads en route to your destination are blocked by high water, fallen trees, downed power lines, or traffic accidents.

While you can’t control the weather, you CAN avoid a replay of the inconvenience, worry, and insecurity that comes every time there’s a tornado warning, a severe weather alert, or an equipment failure that could mean losing electrical power.

Before the next season brings new power outage challenges, you can explore an altogether better option—the peace of mind that comes with uninterrupted power from an automatic, whole-home backup generator from Canter Power Systems, the premier Generac dealer in Daytona Beach.