Could you generate your own power in an emergency?
Could you generate your own power in an emergency?
The technology to do it is here. It’s about getting the balance right and making a good business case.
Having intensified the debate over nuclear energy, the Fukushima disaster in Japan has also brought into focus the issue of power protection and how businesses need to consider how they might generate electricity from their own energy sources in the future; particularly in the event that a major power facility becomes inoperable. Yes - it is extremely unlikely that anything on the scale of what happened in Japan could happen here in the UK; but disasters do occur, and can have serious consequences for power plants and sub-stations.
Take the 2007 floods that affected much of Gloucestershire, South West England and threated to take out the Castlemeads sub-station at Walham in Gloucestershire. So serious an issue was it that it prompted a discussion by the Government’s emergency planning committee. Homes and businesses in the area were affected but thankfully a major disaster was averted, the plant was saved and disruption temporary.
In 2005, the Carlisle floods prompted the Government to ask electricity network companies to assess flood risk to major substations and many have since put measures in place to be better prepared to deal with such disasters.
Installing UPS power protection, alongside additional runtime batteries, would have enabled many businesses outside of the actual flood zones to continue, or at the very least, reduced the load on the power source to protect critical equipment. Onsite generators (had they been installed) would have extended that continuity for days, in many cases, rather than merely hours.
It will be a while before the lessons of Fukushima can be fully appreciated; for recovery from the disaster to be fully dealt with, and investigations completed. But what we do know is that reliance on electrical energy by the Western world is more crucial than ever and that we are all vulnerable to disaster.