Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

The East Coast is in a heat wave, there is no denying that. As air conditioners, tank tops and iced coffee replace winter must-haves like space heaters and Snuggies, the dead heat of summer is also the biggest culprit of power outages and brownouts.

This week in Norwalk, Conn., the mayor had to ask for cooling centers to be opened to help residents deal with the oppressive heat. Cooling centers were opened in the Town Hall and the library, particularly as temperatures climb well into the 90s. In fact, some schools in the Northeast even planned on closing early so that students would not have to remain in buildings without air conditioning.

Yet this type of hot wave can cause more than just discomfort – it can also be a leading cause of brownouts and power surges.

As summer temperatures creep up in the 90s, many individuals cope by cranking up their AC. Businesses, too, put their systems on full blast. This behavior, however, can surge and overload equipment causing it to overheat and trigger equipment failure and power outages, according to Edison Electric Institute.

Blackouts not only cause residents and businesses to cope with an increasingly hot facility but they also contribute to downtime. To cope with blackouts and ensure uptime and that business productivity is not hampered, power protection products are a must-have.

Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a leading provider of power protection technologies, reminds individuals that average business experience 5 outages a year.

“Without protection, this means that 5.7 times per year business cannot be conducted,” Duston Nixon, marketing communications specialist at Minuteman, told TMCne in a recent interview. “Though the average outage lasts only 10 minutes, the time to reboot equipment is much longer, not to mention time lost due to unsaved work and/or corrupted data.”

The Electric Power Research Institute has found that, on average, a one second power outage costs a business $1,477, and the tab for a one hour outage comes to $7,795. Overall, this costs the U.S. economy between $104 and $164 billion annually.

“The initial cost of most of our UPS products can be easily recovered the first time an outage occurs,” Nixon said. “This is true for our lowest priced offerings, the EnSpire Series Standby, which can support a desktop PC or network equipment, as it is for our enterprise-level Endeavor Series, which can support an entire network or server system.”