Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Sometimes disasters can point the way for improvements we’ve been putting off for a long time, but really should not ignore. There’s a lesson in a recent outage in New Jersey.

Last week a power failure affected more than 12,800 people in Hunterdon County. Not only were homes and businesses darkened, furnaces and water pumps went off and equipment was endangered from the electrical issue.

The power initially went out as the result of a trip in the Central Jersey Power & Light company, which supplies power to the area. Power was down for many users for about 45 minutes.

This was a pretty poor time for lost power. Temps were in the low 20s, and temperatures inside homes and businesses dropped quickly. Areas hit included parts of Alexandria, Delaware, East Amwell, Franklin, Holland, Raritan (News - Alert) and West Amwell townships, according to NJ.com.

Perhaps worse than the outage were the “brownouts” that customers experienced as a result of the problem, and this is where the outage has a wider lesson for businesses of all types.

Brownouts are when electrical voltage dips below acceptable levels but the power is not cut completely. It is to appliances and computer equipment what strangulation is to people, and brownouts can hurt the circuitry of equipment of all types that is relying on a steady flow of power. Losing power can be better than reduced power, for an outage doesn’t often hurt equipment but not enough power sure can.

Business equipment, especially computers and servers that don’t have internal batteries as backup power, are especially at threat to the effects of brownouts.

Businesses that ignore the potential of brownouts do so at their peril.

The solution is having backup power, of course, a source of power that kicks in when issues occur with the normal source of power—as they did for businesses in the affected New Jersey areas last week.

Even if a business does not think that an outage will hurt business, it is worth investing in a backup power supply from Minuteman or another power protection company to avoid equipment damage from voltage shortages or overages. Not all uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) supply voltage regulation, but businesses with equipment that matters should invest in units that do offer this functionality.

Even though I don’t have that much important data, I always have a voltage-regulating UPS to protect my data. Businesses have a much stronger reason to do so.

There’s a reason why lost power in NJ is worth reporting even to those who are not affected. It is a warning to take the appropriate precautions for when the crisis hits a little closer to home.