Data Center Hub

Every one of us is at risk for extended power outages after storms, tornadoes, or hurricanes. In the event you do experience the power outage, how long your power outage will last will depend on the severity of the storm as well as where you are in relationship to the grid itself. When your local area is experiencing widespread power outages, there are certain steps that are taking to restore power beginning with facilities which provide critical services.

As a general rule power plants and power lines from the plants are going to be restored first. It should be obvious that without power to the main power lines power cannot be restored elsewhere.

The second groups which will have power restored are those which provide services such as hospitals, fire stations, and public safety such as police. Next after this group is grocery stores and gas stations as well as traffic control systems.

Next in the list are the major power lines that serve large amounts customers followed by smaller power lines that provide power to individual streets, and last among the groups to be restored are individual homes and businesses with out power.

So where does your home or business fit in relationship to the grid? If your business is located in a residential area, you can expect that your business will be a low priority for restoration. If however, your business is located directly next to your local hospital, it is very likely your business will be among the first to have power restored.

How do you begin to assess the risk? The first thing you should do is take a look at how power is fed to your building. If you have an above ground wiring you can simply follow the wiring with your eye up to your power pole. What kind of power pole do you have? Is it wood or steel? If the poll is wooden, you should take a look at it to see what its physical condition is, is it rotted or damaged? If the pole is made of steel, you should check it for rust and for proper fastening at the ground. Take a look around the wires on your pole, are there any tree limbs resting on the wiring? If so, you should inform your power company to have the trees trimmed back before they cause an issue.

It’s important to note, even if you are located directly next to a hospital, you can still have a situation where the last mile to your home or business is filled via one of these old wooden power poles-in which case power would be restored very quickly to the grid but should the line into your home be damaged you can still be without power for an extended period of time. Homes and businesses with power feeds which are underground are obviously going to be at the least risk for extended power outages.

Keep all these factors in mind when assessing your risk for extended power outages along with the need for your home or business to have power during these times. The size of generator system you purchase, the capacity for fuel storage, the type of fuel your system is powered by, along with such aspects of automatic power switching will all affect your choice of emergency power and UPS systems.

One way to assess risk of being without power is to simply take your annual revenues and divide it by the number of HRS in the year to come up with an average value per hour that you may be without power. For example should your business have annual revenues of $1.5 million, you can divide that by 8760-the number of hours in the year. This would give you a value for each hour you are without service of roughly $171 in revenue. Of course, this assumes your working 24 hours a day which you’re not-so the real figure of lost revenue would likely be much higher. It’s more likely a correct figure would be closer to three times your revenue divided by the number of hours in the year.

Given the above figures, one can estimate the average revenue to be in the neighborhood of $4000 for each 8 hour day so a five day power outage could cost you $20,000 in revenues. These rule of thumb figures should help you put your budgeting in perspective.

Other items to consider:

1. Take steps to minimize impact if suppliers upon which you depend for products or services are disrupted during weather related events.
2. Plan for alternate communication, transportation, and courier services.
3. Create a plan for your employees to follow in the event of sever weather, tornado, or hurricane.
4. Create a plan to restore your business operation after the storm has cleared
5. Take a look at your current insurance policies and assess the sufficiency of coverage.
6. Determine in advance methods for assessing and reporting storm damages.

Even if you are not located in an area likely to be affected by severe weather it is still possible for your business to be impacted by it. In our office we waited one year to get a new door. Why? The factory which made all the doors in our building is located in New Orleans; well, they were in New Orleans.