Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Does your business have a power protection plan? Don’t worry; I’m not trying to sell you any specific plan, just letting you know that you should have one. If the power outage in Minneapolis last Friday is any indication, it’s important to have a plan for when the lights go out.

When the power goes out, there’s no telling when it’ll come back. It could be anywhere from a few minutes to a few days, depending on the cause and conditions, and losing that much time can be crippling to a business, or at least especially annoying.

For example, during the aforementioned power outage, local businesses found themselves quite literally in the dark. Grocery stores lost dairy and meat products as they perished due to lack of refrigeration, stores like Target (News - Alert) provided minimal backup lighting, and local cafes had to shut down until power was restored.

That demonstrates nicely the importance of having a plan. Backup generators are great, and can provide needed power to vital functions. Still, those can only provide so much power for so long, so it takes more than just that. Employees need to know what to do, so they’re not scrambling around in a panic trying to figure out if they should be somewhere doing something. Working by candlelight isn’t exactly appealing, and most tablets people use require electricity, rather than a chisel. Fortunately, wireless devices can remain active from their internal batteries, but with no working Internet connection, there’s only so much they can do.

They say that time is money, so when time is lost to a power outage, so is money. No power means no productivity, which sets everyone behind, and that’s without any perishable items to worry about.

It never hurts to be safe. A power outage is just one of the things that businesses and individuals alike must prepare for, but a company, store, or anything else of the sort should be smart and prepare a power protection plan, if just to be safe.