How vulnerable are we, digitally, in the event of a power outage?

Many people do not think it is too bad; a few hours without the news or social media is not too big of a problem. But, a power outage can be more serious and deeper than restricted social media usage.

Everyday life can also be difficult for us. What happens if the media cannot enlighten and inform us about news? If something serious has happened, you will not receive any information about what has happened, how to act and where not to be, which is highly relevant for us today considering COVID-19.

The first thing a company worries about, however, is usually the financial aspects. At a specific one hour long internet shutdown, Fastly’s customers lost $29 million in revenue.*¹ Considering the impact of this power outage, it is likely that dissatisfied customers will change to a different company instead. In the long run, it is worth considering the loss of loyal customers versus the gain of not installing a system to take care of this problem. Losing customers also leads to less turnover, which will impact the staff and of course, questioning the company’s survival. For example, how much would one hour of power outage cost banks, the stock market etc.?

A power outage can also impact people’s lives. If a hospital experiences a power outage, the backup power must be reliable enough to not jeopardize the patients safety and survival. However, it is important to be sure of the backup power’s ability; will it be switched on immediately? Has it been analyzed and cleared for usage? The answers to all the questions that should be asked during these critical circumstances, can determine between life and death.

How do you prepare for this and what can you do about this problem?
First of all, if you already have a backup power system with UPS batteries you need a battery monitoring system. This will trigger an alarm when batteries need replacement, when one is faulty or out of charge. But beware, all battery monitoring systems do not work well enough. It is probably only Batscan battery monitoring that holds the measure. Additionally, and most importantly, you need to analyze the UPS batteries to know the batteries’ condition to replace the critical battery before a power outage. That´s what we do, please contact us for more info!

*¹ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/finiancial-times-new-york-times-bloomberg-news-websites-down-2021-06-08/