Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

You don’t know when it will strike or for how long, but when a power outage hits your area, you certainly will wish you had been prepared. Between the spoiled food from the refrigerator stopping, the shivers running up your spine from a lack of heat and the panic that sets in that your power may never return, experiencing a blackout can be tough.

Some assume that the probability of a power failure is so low that why invest in a generator, an uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) or, hey, even extra blanket. But outages happen without warning and without prejudice.

“While people often operate under the assumption a problem will not happen to them, the fact is that outages happen frequently in the United States.” Bill Allen, marketing director at Minuteman, told TMCnet. “According to studies by J.D. Power & Associates, the average business experiences 5.7 outages per year. Electric Power Research estimates the total cost of these outages to the U.S. economy between $104 and 164 million.”Last summer, more than 70,000 Monmouth County New Jersey residents were left without power when equipment failure in the power transmission system at a Jersey Central Power & Light sub-station resulted in a massive blackout. For almost five hours, homes and businesses were affected as power was knocked out in almost every municipality in Monmouth County.

A few months later in November, the Giants-Cowboys NFL game was put on hold as a blown transformer caused the lights to go out at the New Meadowlands Stadium, resulting in a seven-minute delay during the third quarter.

Most recently, in early February, Texas imposed statewide rolling blackouts for only the second time in over two decades after abrasive winter wind gusts shut down dozens of generators. A grid operator referred to that time as an energy emergency after 7,000 megawatts of power generators, about eight percent of the installed capacity in the second-most populated state, had to be shut down.

The result of the emergency was that almost 1 million homes were left in the dark for more than an hour.

"Rolling blackouts in Houston ... You would have never thought you would see the day in the energy capital of the world," Jack Moore, chief executive of oilfield services equipment maker Cameron, told Reuters.

Since power outages strike and often leave people unprepared, power protection companies like Minuteman UPS/Para Systems are reminding people of the importance of being ready. Minuteman, a company that produces some of the industry's most reliable power technology products, has been at the forefront of this trend for years. As a pioneer in extended runtime applications for more than 25 years, Minuteman has been leading the charge for more reliable UPS devices, from the time it became the first company to offer battery packs with a UPS.

“The convergence of all forms of communications means the entire operation is now dependent on the communications system,” Duston Nixon, marketing communications specialist with Minuteman, told TMCnet. “Previously, with separate systems handling network and voice connectivity, a secondary system would be readily available and allow operations to continue – the movement to integrated communications means that if any part of the communications system fails, business operations cease as well.”

All this month, the power protection company is offering instant rebates of up to $250 on all the tools needed to protect entire networks, telephones or security systems.

This quarter, rebates will be offered for different product lines including: EnSpire standby UPSs, Minuteman’s lowest cost models designed for small electrical loads such as computers and peripherals; EnterprisePlus, which is a slightly less expensive line-interactive model very popular for telecom applications; and Endeavor series UPSs, for large mission-critical server and network systems.

Better to be safe than sorry right?