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Power supply outages could be the result of squirrels and birds

Birds and Squirrels Cause 11% of Power Outages

Did you know that squirrels and birds cause 11% of the power supply outages annually? It’s true, and they’re not the only looming threat. With so much on the line, it’s important to protect your mission-critical equipment. Here’s how a comprehensive energy security plan can help. 

Why It’s Important to Protect Your Data

Power supply outages are a fact of everyday life in the USA. As a data driven society, the more we depend on the electronic revolution to improve and sustain our business, the more we stand to lose from power failure. Be it from nature, a windstorm or a prolonged heat wave, power supply outages can cause a great deal of expensive problems.

This is especially problematic considering our homes, healthcare facilities, businesses and government administrations all rely on computerized data. We depend on having uninterrupted access to our data to keep our lives, business and society running smoothly.

The good news is a comprehensive power security study of your facility can help provide your business with protection. But before we get into the details of the study, we’re going to give a little more history on why it’s more important now than ever.

Less Funding for Electrical Infrastructure, More Power Supply Outages

In a study by Dr. Massoud Amin with the University of Minnesota, nationwide spending on the electrical infrastructure has been declining since 1997. In fact, research and development spending dropped by 74 percent from 1993 to 2000.

These findings are staggering considering the critical need of a “smart grid” and other advancements in electrical infrastructure design. Dr. Amin’s 2011 cost estimate for a comprehensive grid upgrade was $82 billion just to stabilize the existing grid, and another $170 billion to build a new smart electrical grid.

As a result of the grid shortfalls, according to PA Consulting (2011), the average US electric consumer was without power for 112 minutes. Loss of power results in loss of data, loss of production and loss of money.

How a Comprehensive Energy Security Plan can Help

Protect Your Critical Data & Power Supply

Simply installing a generator or UPS does not guarantee that you will have the power needed to sustain your facilities’ data protection and operations. A comprehensive energy security plan is a proactive approach that will provide you with protection and peace of mind.

An energy security plan can help you identify points of vulnerability within your facility, and implement security measures to mitigate future problems. A plan requires a detailed understanding of your business, processes and power dependence.

The first step in establishing your plan is to contract a power security study of your facility. A study will identify the requirements and areas of vulnerability within your facility. It will also provide an in-depth review of operational costs, ongoing maintenance and support, required run time, electrical integration and internal needs.

Find a specialist in the field who can conduct a data driven, vendor-neutral objective study to determine the level of power security you need.

Why Clouds Won’t Protect Your Facility

Many people think being connected to “the cloud” will protect their facility from data loss. However, in the event of a power supply failure, clouds cannot guarantee data protection. Therefore, the more dependent you are on a cloud, the more your voice and data lines need protection.

Also, given recent hacking issues facing multiple cloud-based suppliers, many firms are rethinking the “all in” approach to the cloud and opting for a hybrid – local storage and control with backup to storage in the cloud.

Organizations may not admit to a cloud security breach until the intrusion is on a mass scale. And, as recent events demonstrate, hackers aren’t afraid to target the larger storage deposits and cloud providers.

Power supply failure threatens your business and its critical data. Squirrels and birds causing power supply outages? You can outsmart them. Take action and protect your data now with a comprehensive energy plan

(This post was written by QPS Director of Technical Services and Compliance, Tom Bogucki, CPQ.)

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