Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Did you ever think how much total power is involved at a racetrack? All those vehicles, throwing out maximum horsepower for extended periods of time, has got to add up to some incredible numbers.

Yet it was all for naught recently, when the facility power went out at a Phoenix, Arizona, racetrack just as the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Lucas Oil 150 was scheduled for an 8:30 p.m. local starting time. The lights went out, so the cars shut down and the drivers got out … and waited.

According to a blog post from Duston Nixon, Marketing Communications Specialist at Minuteman Uninterruptible Power Supply, the outage put a damper on the entire evening. Even after the lights came back on after 80 minutes, the race was called off 12 laps from the end, as officials feared another blackout, which would have imperiled all the drivers traveling at up to 130 MPH.

“Fans left disappointed after the bizarre night saw only 114 of 126 laps completed,” Nixon wrote. “NASCAR officials cited safety concerns as the reason for cutting the race short, deeming the risk of [another] outage too great to send drivers back out onto the high speed oval.”

Still, the lack of any crowd control, security, or other off-track issues during the outages indicated that the track was adequately prepared to handle the outage, even if the on-track product suffered.

But, as Nixon points out, “The NASCAR blackout can teach us a lesson: backing up communications systems, security devices, and other critical functions with Uninterruptible Power Supplies, including Minuteman’s newest ERS Ruggedized UPSs, ensures that they will be available when power fails.”

With winter just scant weeks away (and some areas of the U.S. already having seen significant snow and freezing), the time to prepare is now. Once the power goes out and data is lost, the race, as they say, is over.