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An Electrifying Morning as 79,000 Customers Lose Power

Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

An Electrifying Morning as 79,000 Customers Lose Power

 
April 07, 2015

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  By Steve Anderson, Contributing Writer

The cries are old and familiar by now, but familiarity hasn't dulled the accuracy one bit. The power grid is aging and losing its capability, and for 79,000 residents of Butte County, California — according to the Chico Enterprise-Record — the power grid lost capability, taking the power with it. Some locations, however, proved to be more prepared than others to take on the loss of power.


The Chico Enterprise-Record report notes that “tens of thousands” of customers of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E (News - Alert)) in Butte County — including not only most of Chico, Magalia and Paradise, but also portions of Butte Creek Canyon, Butte Valley, Durham and Oroville — lost power at about eight Monday morning, and the outage went on for just over four hours in some places, meaning that most of a Monday morning had been lost due to power outage.

Early reports from PG&E's Paul Moreno suggest that it was equipment failure that took out the power, with a switch used to isolate power lines and reroute electric flow as needed having issues that then impacted an insulator at the Table Mountain Substation. Investigation, meanwhile, is still ongoing as to why there was such an issue in the first place.

Several problems stemmed from the power outage, including an increased number of calls as well as several car crashes, and Chico firefighters were left to respond to four instances of people trapped in elevators. Chico State College closed briefly, but with the power restored very early that afternoon, reopened later in the day. Butte College, meanwhile, carried on through the power outage, though some professors were said to cancel classes. The Enloe Medical Center went to emergency generators, and several other medical locations closed as well, though staff was on hand to redirect patients until power was restored. The Chico Mall, meanwhile, closed outright.

Basically, an entire morning's work was lost, for the most part, thanks to one part of the power grid going down. This is a clear opportunity, however, to show the kind of value that backup power systems can have on hand. While of course backup generators are optimal — as the Enloe Medical Center showed — not everyone can afford such things. That's where tools like Minuteman's line of power protection products come into play, allowing that few extra minutes of power to complete a thought, save a document, and shut down a computer outright. Indeed, since some outages are temporary and extremely short in duration, a tool like those offered by Minuteman might be able to bridge that gap between the power going off and coming back on less than a minute later. Power surges, brownouts, and other issues become much more readily addressed by the Minuteman systems.

While not everyone can afford backup generators for when the power goes out, having a Minuteman UPS or other system in place can help mitigate some of the lost opportunity a power outage represents. That can mean the difference between inconvenience and disaster, so keeping these tools in mind while the lights are still on can be a big advantage for the company that puts such tools to work.




Edited by Rory J. Thompson
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