Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

The winter season may be over, but that doesn’t mean utility companies and customers are worry-free.  In fact, that’s far from the truth, as more than 40,000 Memphis Light, Gas and Water, customers in and around Memphis, Tennessee, found out over the weekend when a line of powerful storms passed through the area downing trees , power lines, and at least one utility pole. 

MLGW says it doesn’t expect to have complete restoration until Tuesday and has requested outside assistance to help with repairs.  The expected restoration timeline unfortunately coincides with another expected incidence of severe weather on Tuesday. 

That new storm system is also what has caused NOAA to issue a “high risk” warning for the southern Plains states for Monday, with tornadoes, high winds, large hail, heavy rain, and flash flooding expected throughout the region.  The Memphis may experience some heavy thunderstorms from this system Tuesday and into Tuesday evening.

These storms all pose a significant threat to businesses, which rely on technology to function.  The outages caused by storm systems send power surges through lines that can cause catastrophic damage to equipment, taking businesses offline for much longer than the outages themselves due to repair or replacement time and costs. 

To avoid both extended downtime and lost revenue opportunities, businesses must have power protection systems installed that regulate incoming line voltage to ensure surges don’t impact sensitive circuitry, so when power is restored, business can resume normally.

Power protection systems can be designed to meet the needs of any size business and to safeguard as little or as much sensitive equipment as necessary.  The UPS capabilities of these systems can also power systems long enough for IT teams to manually shut them down to prevent data loss or software corruption.  In addition, remote power management solutions allow IT to shut down and reboot equipment from anywhere.