Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

As captured in this recent piece, power failures can actually happen in a variety of ways. Sometimes Mother Nature will wipe out the supply with a fierce storm; a construction crew can have an accident that knocks out power for a few hours; or a truck can hit a power line, affecting service for thousands of users.

Even when outside pressures are not at play, rolling blackouts or blackout strikes occur in various parts of the country during cycles of high demand. Regardless of the cause of the outage, the business must have a robust power protection plan in place to ensure they do not have to stop operations just because power is lost. It is important to keep in mind that a power protection plan does not address “if” a power failure occurs, but instead “when”.

The power protection plan will rely on power protection solutions that range from small, inexpensive surge suppressors, to giant, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) that are designed to support an entire facility. These power protection devices are essential simply because the electricity supplied by power plants is not totally reliable in both quality and availability.

While power supply in the U.S. seems as though it is reliable, the infrastructure relies on many of the same equipment that was installed 40 to 50 years ago. A CNN report shows that power problems cost businesses and consumers more than $119 billion every year and this cost is likely to continue to grow as demand continues to grow.

Aside from the cost and inconvenience involved in a power failure, a company may also have liability and safety issues to address. Assets, employees and customers may be protected with security systems and access control systems may be put in place for proper monitoring and control. When these systems fail due to a lack of proper power protection, the company, its employees, assets and customers are all put at risk.

It is important that the business never assume that power protection is assured. Utilities can never promise 100 percent uptime guarantees, which will leave the business vulnerable when the power failure occurs. No business can afford not to implement a power protection plan to be sure assets are never vulnerable or lost, employees are never put at risk and customers are left in the dark.