Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Sure we’ve heard of bizarre things causing power outages – like that rogue squirrel who finds its way onto and into utility and power equipment and causes power outages or the construction crew member that unintentionally cuts cables located underground while working. But a drunk driver? Really?

Well this week, a thousand NBU customers in New Braunfels, Texas, were left without power when an inebriated driver crashed his car and hit the guy-wire of a power pole. The impact from the crash reportedly caused the wire to fly up into the power line which blew the transformer and caused a massive power outage. The 22-year-old unidentified driver was booked on a DWI charge.

Although NBU crews went to work to repair the damage and reroute the power – and had most back with their power in a few hours – the incident certainly shed light on the importance of purchasing power protection units due to the fact that freak accidents can certainly occur and leave you in the dark.

Specifically, a gift that was meant for someone’s significant other to celebrate Valentine’s Day ended up inadvertently leaving a good portion of California residents without power a few weeks ago. A helium-filled balloon, which Sothern California Edison officials are saying was most likely a Valentine’s gift, strayed from its course and accidently directly hit Southern California Edison’s (News - Alert) Fontana substation on Feb. 14. The result was that 15,099 sweethearts were left without power and were forced to amend their Valentine’s Day plans. The outage lasted about an hour.

Whether it be Valentine’s Day gifts, construction accidents, traffic accidents or employee sabotage, outages can be caused by a variety of nonconventional factors. And, accordingly, businesses must be aware of the importance of power protection products as bouts of downtime (caused by things as trivial as Valentine’s Day gifts), can wreak havoc for businesses, according to officials at Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a leading provider of power protection units.

Fortunately, Minuteman recently released a white paper  called “Powering Your Business Disaster Planning” which delineates the key components of an all encompassing power protection plan – one which proves failproof during short-term power surges cause by random incidences or even extended outages. 

“The business community and virtually any other type of organization are highly dependent on continuous, reliable power in order to maintain the availability of servers and network peripherals, telephone systems, and security systems,” commented Bill Allen, director of marketing for Minuteman. “Not much business gets conducted without power, and it’s highly incumbent on these institutions to make sure they have a viable disaster plan in place that includes power availability contingencies.”

While an average outage lasts eight to 10 minutes, the average extended power outage is eight hours. The Electric Power Research Institute has found that, on average, a one second power outage costs a business $1,477, and the tab for a one hour outage comes to $7,795. Overall, this costs the U.S. economy between $104 and $164 billion annually.

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