Owyhee Mountain Power

In the before-times of 2019 and 2020, Russ set out to install solar on his property - and successfully did so. But the original plans of a battery backed, hybrid, grid-flexible system ran squarely into the face of Idaho’s Red Tape. The Inhbitor of Solar Installs didn’t like the plans, wouldn’t approve them, and so Russ ended up with something a bit “less than hoped for.”

But Russ still wanted backup power. There’s nothing like being able to just ignore grid outages for a long while, especially during the sunny season. And so, Russ planned to build some sort of oddball little trailer with some batteries and inverters, maybe a solar panel or two.

But then Russ mentioned this idea to Cale. Cale, similarly, lives out in rural Idaho, and felt that the idea of some mobile power backup was also an excellent idea. The difference is that while Russ builds things out of timber, Cale builds things out of metal.

Many napkins faced the pen, metal faced first the saw, then the welder, ideas faced the harsh mistress of reality, and out of all this came The Prototype. Which was promptly towed behind a port-a-potty.

No, Really. It’s True.

All of the above, in fact, is true. We discovered that we both wanted the same sort of thing, and decided to collaborate to build rolling power sources. Along the way, enough other people expressed interest that we decided it was a string worth pulling, and founded Owyhee Mountain Power to build these trailers.

Of course, founding a company during the middle of a pandemic has all sorts of interesting details, mostly involving about twenty versions of “What do you mean I can’t buy this insanely common thing that I’ve never had trouble obtaining before?” But such is life.