Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

For the second time in just over a month, a power outage delayed a Tampa Bay Rays game, when the lights went out at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida Thursday night.  Duke Energy (News - Alert) blamed the half-hour outage on a bird’s nest falling into a substation and coming into contact with energized equipment.   In addition to the stadium, almost 13,000 utility customers in the area were also left in the dark.

Inside the stadium, fans were left in the dark when all power in the seating areas went out, including the LED lighting systems and video boards, as well as the live broadcast on Fox Sports.  A large number of fans turned on their cell phone flashlights to create some visibility.

Well this was different. pic.twitter.com/OhH4sQuma6

— Andrew Freed (@AndrewFreed33) June 14, 2019

To make up for the inconvenience, the ballclub offered fans “buy one, get one free” beer and soda while the concessions were still serving.

An electrical failure caused a 45-minute outage on May 12 during a Rays-Yankees game, and last season, Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles experienced multiple power outages.

The problems with power outages are many.  Certainly, there is the inconvenience to paying fans and loss of revenue opportunity, not to mention creating a dangerous environment where the probability of accidental injury increases.  But, for any business, including stadium owners and operators, there are additional concerns any time power goes out.

Surges that are common during power outages can damage technology, bringing systems down for much longer than the duration of an outage.  The circuits in electronic equipment are designed to handle specific a specific current, and when spikes or surges run through facilities, they can overload the circuits, requiring lengthy and costly repairs or replacement.

But, there is an easy way of avoiding damage from outages.  Power protection systems with UPS capabilities are designed to manage and regulate power as it enters buildings, ensuring only clean power is delivered to equipment.  The UPS capabilities supply enough power to allow systems to be manually shut down to prevent data loss or corruption.

Power loss is inevitable.  Equipment damage resulting from outages is not.  A properly designed and installed power protection system will keep systems safe and relieve some of the strain IT teams and business leaders are under.

Rays’ fans certainly hope this is the last outage, since their club has not fared well in outage-impacted games.  They lost Thursday to The Angels 5-3, and 7-1 to the Yankees on May 12.