Severe weather can bring increased potential for power outages, threatening business operations and raising the risk for lost productivity, lost revenue, or even personal injury. Here are a few considerations to help prepare your business for a power outage:
Do your employees know where to go during a severe weather event?
We suggest posting safety maps around your facility, including general instructions and indicated safe areas for your employees to take shelter during severe weather. It’s also good practice to perform training refreshers this time of year. Safety first!
Do you have an emergency generator?
An automatic, emergency standby generator could be an important part of business continuity planning for any operations with critical functions that would otherwise result in a loss or hardship in the event of a power outage.
If you have an emergency generator, will your generator perform as expected during an extended power outage?
It’s a difficult question to answer unless your generator has recently been load-bank tested. A generator’s weekly exercise confirms that it starts, runs, and transfers power if programmed to exercise with load, but it doesn’t confirm that it will carry your building load for an extended period of time. To confirm this, the generator must be load-bank tested to ensure operation under a loaded condition.
Does your generator have enough fuel to carry you through an extended power outage, and is the fuel quality reliable?
For diesel generator tanks, we suggest keeping the fuel level as close to full as possible, and certainly above 75% capacity. We also suggest fuel-testing and maintenance to ensure that your fuel quality remains clean, stable, and ready for the next power outage.
Clifford Power is an authorized Generac® industrial power dealer.