In parts of the country prone to wildfires, utility companies have taken to shutting down electrical lines in high-fire-danger areas during red flag (hot, dry, and windy) weather. Often power lines that run through these areas are high-voltage transmission lines, the ones that take the power from the generation plant to several substations. Those substations step down the voltage and send that power out to neighborhoods and business districts. So shutting down transmission lines means shutting off the power to large areas, often far from the high-fire-danger area.
In other parts of the country, weather events take down the power regularly during hurricane/tornado/ice storm/blizzard/flood season.
Can a business keep its office running when the power is out for several days, both in the office and at employees’ homes?
Of course it can, if it’s in a solar-powered building that generates all the power it needs from solar panels and stores that power in on-site batteries. But most businesses lease their offices and cannot control the building’s energy source. So let’s look at smaller smaller-scale, temporary options.
When faced with power outages, some people think generators. I’ve ranted elsewhere about the evils of fossil-fuel portable generators: dangerous, loud, horribly polluting, and limited to the amount of fuel you can safely store on site (gas pumps need electricity to operate).
There is an alternative that can be used indoors, runs silently, and generates no fumes: portable power stations (PPSs). These are large batteries with multiple outlets that can power electrical devices.
So the power’s out for a few days. Why not just go home, play board games with the kids, and come back to work when the power is back on?
If it’s a short outage, that approach may be fine. But what if the outage lasts a week or more?
In a pre-Covid study, FEMA found that, of businesses forced to close by a disaster, 90% fail within a year unless they reopen within five days. Beyond five days, you can start losing employees and customers and build up a deficit that will be hard to overcome.
Investing in a system that will get your business through power outages can buy you a lot of peace of mind.
The cost may be daunting. But how does it compare to the cost of being unable to operate your business? Gasoline generators may seem cheaper, but remember to calculate in fuel costs and the cost of maintenance (cost of maintenance on a no-moving-parts PPS = zero).
Still, PPSs can be a worthwhile investment in many business settings. They can keep some critical functions running when the power goes down, whether for just a few hours when a car hits a telephone pole nearby or during a Public Safety Power Shutdown. You can even use them to trim your energy bills throughout the year. You can charge them overnight when the cost of power is lowest and then use that electricity during the day when power costs are high. This peak load shifting will speed up your break-even time on your investment in your PPSs.
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