Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

This summer has been filled with unseasonably high temperatures (and coming straight off a week in Austin, Texas, at ITEXPO (News - Alert) West 2011 where temperatures soared to 107 degrees Fahrenheit in September, our team can definitely concur).

Yet with intense heat comes greater chances for power outages, and South Korea is the latest hot spot to succumb to harsh weather conditions. Last week, South Korea experience an unseasonable heat wave that cause power outages all around the country, trapping hundreds of individuals in elevators, stopping factory operations and shutting down traffic lights. 

The outages affected at least 820,000 homes across the country for about six hours until power was restored, according to a Huffington Post article. In a statement last week, Economy Minister Choi Joong-kyung apologized for failing to be adequately prepared for the surge in demand, and officials said demand was 3.2 million kilowatts higher than expected.

Temperatures peaked at 88 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature Seoul had seen in nearly two weeks, and the state-run Korea Power Exchange, which coordinates power supplies, said that some power facilities were being repaired when the demand for power peaked.

With out of control summers like the one we just experienced, the need for adequate power protection becomes clearer.

Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a provider of power protection technologies, is one company spearheading the campaign for power protection products. Recently, the company issued a white paper titled “Powering Your Business Disaster Planning: The Case for Extended Runtime UPSs with External Battery Back,” a paper that discusses how to dodge power-related disasters with a “ variety of uninterruptible power supply (UPS) options and approaches, including extended runtime battery backup power on all mission-critical devices.”

The paper relies on research from Frost and Sullivan that states that every year 72 percent of businesses in the US are affected by power cuts that interrupt critical operations. Moreover, International Data Corporation estimates that companies lose an average of $84,000 for every hour of downtime. And while power protection, in the form of an uninterruptible power supplies(UPS), has been around for several decades and can help avert disaster, surveys indicate that up to 60 percent of small business networks do not have any power protection.

To read more about Minuteman’s white paper, click here.