Business Planning - Have you planned for a power failure?

Business Planning – Have you planned for power failure?

Power failure for a business can be catastrophic, especially if the business has no back up plan for if their power does fail. Power failure is when the main source of electrical power fails to provide power and it can occur due to many reasons, but the main reason is due to harsh weather conditions, which accounts for around 80% of all power failures in the US[1]. The recent UK power outage left a million premises without power. Power failure should be avoided at all costs and if there is a loss of power then your business will stop trading and therefore start making losses. For businesses with perishable goods, such as a restaurant, the costs of power failure can be even greater as it would cause all perishable goods to go off without power for the fridges or freezers.

The effects of power failure to a business will vary dependant on how reliant the business is on power and on how long the power outage lasts for. For example, a short power loss for a few minutes will have minimal effects on a business, especially if there is no power surge leading to damaged equipment. However sometimes power failure can last for multiple days, which is what will cause the biggest problems and highest costs for a business.

There are many ways to go about preparing for power failure and depending on your type of business will mean certain solutions are better suited than others. The most obvious planning for a business which may encounter power failure would be to have some sort of back up power source, which either automatically or manually comes on when the main power source fails. Therefore, a portable or standby generator could be used during power failure.

A portable generator is the more affordable option of the two, and more suited for lower power requirement jobs. However, with a portable generator you must manually turn on the generator when the power fails and as it will be more than likely powered by gas you have to make sure it always has enough gas in it to keep the generator powered, which means refuelling it even in the harshest weather conditions. Another drawback of it being gas powered is that there’s a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust, so the generator must be placed in a suitable environment which is not too close to people but also be well ventilated.

 A standby generator on the other hand, is a generator which will come on automatically when the power fails and must be professionally installed into your business. Standby generators are also quieter and safer than a portable generator as they are in a canopy. This does come at a cost as standby generators are much more expensive than portable ones, however they are of a more long-term investment and have a much longer life time than a portable generator.

A standby generator is much more suited for a business where a power is always needed, even if the business isn’t open for customers (e.g. restaurant) or a business which requires a high-power supply due to its size. Conversely, if you run a smaller business (e.g. home ran business) then a standby diesel generator might be more than enough to supply you with backup power in the event of power failure.

Instead of spending money on alternative power sources there are other ways in which a business can prepare for power failure. For example, if parts of the business are running on computers then by making all the information accessible on the ‘cloud’ will allow workers to access the information (e.g. emails) from home (assuming they’ve got access to power). This would mean a power failure wouldn’t cause as much disruption and certain parts of the business would still be able to run like normal.

With storing information in the cloud, it is essential for a business to make sure the information and data stored is backed up regularly. There are two important ideas to understand when looking at information back up, recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). RTO is how long it takes for the system to restore its data, and RPO is the point in time in which your data can be recovered from. Therefore, when looking at power failure, it is important to have a low RPO value so that when power fails, you can restore as much information as possible. A value as low as 5 minutes isn’t uncommon in businesses today, which means that every 5 minutes all data and information will be backed up.

Another thing to take into consideration when power failure takes place, is the sudden surge of electrical power that could potentially occur when the power comes back on. A power surge will lead to irregular electrical currents flowing through the components of your devices. This irregular current flow can sometimes damage these components. Therefore, the power being down for a few minutes might not cause big losses for your business, but the following surge of electricity could damage your IT system. Fixing the IT system can then be a large cost and lead to increased downtime for your business.

All in all, there are many steps you can take in planning to make sure your business is prepared for power failure. As stated earlier, the steps you take in preparing for power failure will vary on the size of your business and on the type of business that you run. However, the majority of businesses should have some sort of back up power to fall back on so the business can still operate as normal during a sustained period of power outage. Certain businesses may get away with not having back up power, and instead storing information in the cloud, so that the employers can access everything they need to from home to keep the business running. Planning for power failure is essential for any business and doing any type of planning will be better than doing none. You might find that generators with Perkins or Cummins Engines are ideal choices if you have a larger business, or for home use Honda.

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Created on Aug 13th 2019 08:38. Viewed 451 times.

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