#214 - Power - the backbone of it all

The June 29th Derecho hit PCSS with a vengeance.  We were without power for 5 days and Internet for 7 days.  Talk about your business crushing event.  Fortunately,  we had just a big mess an no real damage.  Our customers suffered worse and we hope everyone is back to normal.  We used our laptops and found Internet at customer sites (THANKS)  So this blog will be about Power.  The good, the bad and the ugly!

Your friendly power provider (Dominion Power, BARC, American Electric) is supposed to provide your residence or business with alternating current power at nominally 120 volts at 60 cycles per second (Herz).  When stress hits your power provider (think storms, Hot Weather, Cold Weather, etc) one of the methods of keeping power flowing is to slightly decrease the voltage you receive.  Under these conditions (a brown out) you get less then 120 volts and your computer equipment gets less DC power from their power supplies. 

A way to prevent brown outs from negatively affecting your computer equipment is to use an Uninterpretable Power Supply (UPS).  These batter back up systems not only give you power when the power is down, they AUGMENT the power when a brown out occurs.  PCSS recommends you use a UPS with all your valuable electronics.

On the other side of the power supply equations is the Surge.  When lightning strikes wires a surge is transmitted through the wires and can damage your electronics.  Surge Suppressors will protect you for ONE surge.  The way surge suppressors work causes them to no longer provide protection after a surge hits the wire.  If you have an UPS, they will likely provide protection for more then one surge.  Although a severe surge can take out even the best UPS.  Most of these devices have LED indicators when they are no longer providing protection.

"You get what you pay for" is very true when it comes to power protection.  Cheap (less then $15) surge suppressors provide very minimal protection.  When it comes to UPS, PCSS only likes Tripp-Lite and APC brands.  These are large companies, with great engineers, behind their products.  They meet all US Underwriter specifications and they even help write the IEEE specifications to protect the consumer. 

The best thing about power being back on?  Hot water? Air Conditioning?  Internet?  Refrigeration?  Any and all of those certainly make life more enjoyable.  We are a society based on Power as we were reminded in late June.