Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Stealing copper wiring from an electrical substation sounds like the type of crime only seen in places such as Nigeria and India, but it can happen anywhere. Like Salt Lake County in Utah.

Last week nearly 6,000 businesses and homes lost power in the Salt Lake County region when someone cut copper wire out of the Rocky Mountain Power substation.

“Unfortunately, people think that stealing some copper is worth risking their lives and taking out the power to thousands of their neighbors," Paul Murphy of Rocky Mountain Power explained to the local ABC affiliate in Salt Lake when the story broke.

The theft of copper wire from electrical stations can be lucrative for criminals, but it also is dangerous.

"Anytime you go into a substation, you're dealing with high voltage lines, and it's just an extremely dangerous area, and we've had people die trying to steal copper from substations. It's a foolish thing to do," Murphy explained.

Electrical crews currently are assessing the damage, and it looks as though both wire and equipment were taken. Rocky Mountain Power expects the repairs to be costly.

Power outages can occur at any time and without warning. We generally assume that our businesses and homes will have reliable power except in the case of severe weather and electrical storms, but the reality is that our power is not as guaranteed as we think.

At the same time, most businesses and homes do not have proper power protection against electrical failure. Most of us have power strips “protecting” our computer hardware, but these power strips offer less protection than most of us think. While they may protect against power surges, they do not help in the case of power irregularities or keeping the energy flowing when power is cut.

With laptops and peripherals that contain their own battery, a loss of power probably won’t destroy equipment. Servers, external hard drives and desktops are more exposed, and a sudden loss of power can damage hardware in a way that might not immediately be apparent. Often this damage can affect devices but they still function to some degree, albeit erratically.

There also is the issue of lost time. Even a few hours of lost productivity at a business due to downed systems can have a major effect of productivity and income.

The solution is using an uninterruptible power supply, which can supply backup power in the case of an outage. Higher-end models from companies such as Minuteman Power and others also feature built-in voltage regulation to ensure that electrical irregularities do not silently damage hardware, either.

We tend not to think about power loss, but we should. Just like data backup, a little forethought can make a huge difference in the case of an unexpected event.