Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

The summer has started out with a bang, with several large storms knocking out power form the Rockies to New England in the last few weeks. For instance, one storm this week in Leavenworth County, Kan. left tens of thousands of people in the dark—and should serve as a reminder of the importance of having a back-up power source.

"The storm hit pretty hard," Leavenworth County Emergency Management Director Chuck Magaha told the local paper.

The culprit was a severe thunderstorm, which had high winds that clocked in at up to 60 mph. The gusts were consistently high as well: A weather station at Leavenworth Fire Station No. 1 recorded a wind gust of 49 mph; 46 mph was reported at the Leavenworth Wastewater Treatment Plant; and a 44 mph wind gust was recorded at Leavenworth City Hall.

Then there was the rain: up to 1.86 inches of rain were recorded, and dime-sized hail was reported in north central Leavenworth County. Combined with the wind, it all resulted in downed trees and power lines, and power outages that affected about 10,000 Westar Energy customers for almost an entire day.

Despite all of that, the community in many ways got off easy: even stronger winds were reported next door in Missouri, and a tornado warning was issued in the county just south of Leavenworth.

"I'm glad we didn't get any more damage than we did," Magaha said.

But the outage had potentially far-ranging economic damage. Even a small power cut can be catastrophic, according to Allianz economic research; a 30-minute power cut results in an average loss of $15,709 for medium and large industrial clients, and totals nearly $94,000 for an eight-hour interruption. Annually, short blackouts add up to an annual estimated economic loss of between $104 billion and $164 billion per year.

That’s not insignificant, so suffice it to say that organizations of all types must be prepared for the unexpected when it comes to power reliability. Offices that are equipped with a power protection plan would be safe from closure and security concerns (outages often leave IT infrastructure unprotected).

Minuteman, which makes uninterrupted power sources (UPS), notes that when choosing power protection, one of the most important questions to ask is: How mission critical is this equipment?

“While many businesses, such as security firms and hospitals, simply cannot afford any downtime whatsoever, most homes can handle downtime as long as the equipment is protected,” the company noted. “Also, while many businesses require upscale solutions that provide longer backup time, such as rackmount EnterprisePlus LCD or Endeavor systems, many homes do not need that level of protection. Thus, while businesses may seek out an online or line interactive UPS, many homes will only need a standby UPS to protect themselves from power anomalies.”