Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Last month on July 15, residents near downtown Long Beach, California, were without power for a third day after attempts by Southern California Edison (News - Alert) (SCE) to restore its underground power system failed. More than 3,200 customers were still without power on Friday.

An explanation by Southern California Edison stated that restoration was stalled due to the fact that the complicated underground system broke off into three sections and each had to be investigated and fixed individually.

The outages came days after an underground electrical fire sent manhole covers flying into the air with steam rising from the ground. Apparently there were fires in three underground power vaults. Less than two weeks later, on July 30, Southern California Edison reported that at least 30,000 customers were without power.

According to Long Beach’s favorite community website, Gazettes, the mayor of Long Beach is understandably upset as the cause of this second outage was also reported to be an undetermined underground vault explosion.

As you can tell from the number of residents involved, the second outage was definitely more widespread than the first, with the only redeeming factor being that power was restored more quickly the second time around. The problem is that SCE has no explanation as to what caused the fires and explosions in the vaults.

While everyone experiences power outage across the country, it seems to me that we are witnessing a lot more power outages than usual this year. I am not just referring to branches knocking down power lines; I keep seeing reports of power vaults experiencing mysterious fires.

I understand that a great deal of the country’s power infrastructure is old and most of these fires and explosions can easily be caused by frayed wires. However, regardless of the cause or the time of day, when the power goes out, there is no telling when it will be restored. The question to ask yourself is what can be done to try to save as much information and equipment during situations such as this.

The answer is a simple one, but it is also one that most of us do not take advantage of. I am referring to an uninterruptable power supply (UPS), such as those provided by Minuteman Power Technologies. Connecting your more sensitive equipment and data storage devices to a UPS could save a lot of headaches and possibly some money.

I have been in several situations where although the power went out, my Minuteman UPSs kicked in and I was able to systematically shut down every piece of equipment, giving me the comfort of neither suffering any data loss, nor any equipment failures. Seems like it should be a no-brainer to have a reliable UPS, especially in the wake of what seems to be an increasing number of power outages.