Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Last week, various companies quickly realized that they had been left in the dark because their electricity had been shut off. The mistake was made by Dominion Virginia Power, a company that was attempting to change out some power lines, which just so happened to be smack in the middle of a busy business day.

Nearly 73 customers in total suffered the effects of not having power, including the owner of the Dixie restaurant, Charlie Rawlings. In a recent article, Rawlings claimed that the power provider never told him about the possible loss of power due to the work it was doing, and the outage couldn’t have happened at a worse time—turning off just before the lunch rush at 11 a.m. and coming back at around 1 p.m., after customers had likely already eaten for the day.

Rawlings added, “We had to shut it down and send everyone home.”

 Another unfortunate blunder caused by the power outage was seen by visitors to the city of Petersburg (where the incident took place), who were in town to have a meet and greet with the customer designer from the motion picture Lincoln. The designer brought along some costumer pieces to show off to the crowd during the event, yet they couldn’t see much without lights.

With yet another restaurant that couldn’t function due to the outage, Frank Takacs reveals he lost almost two thousand dollars in addition to his long time food lovers because they were frustrated over their wasted time driving to the location and still grumbling bellies when they left.

After hearing these complaints, Dominion released a statement saying, “Dominion Virginia Power sincerely regrets having caused this inconvenience for our customers and for the citizens of Petersburg. We did not provide sufficient advance notification before undertaking work that will improve electric service in the area.”

 It seems as if the two week notice traditionally given to people in an area scheduled for work was mishandled. Yet, the bigger question is why didn’t these business owners have a power protection plan in place that would allow them to continue operating as usual, even in the face of certain obstacles caused by power lines being worked on?

MinuteMan UPS/Para Systems powers an array of power protection and management products for computer, servers, peripherals, voice and data communication systems, security systems and other types of equipment that, if in place, could have enabled these organizations to continue through the workday without interruption.

Not only can power outages, like the recent one in Virginia, prompt operational setbacks, it can also mean the loss of valuable customers. MinuteMan enable firms to rest assured that if electricity does go down the drain they will be able to handle it—no matter if it is a simple power outage, brownout, surge or spike-related problem.