Erratic weather patterns due to climate change are being blamed for how many power cuts Britain has been experiencing over the last few years. Thorpe Park was hit by a series of power outages in July, with visitors left stranded on rides during sweltering temperatures, while more than 15 power cuts were reported in 24 hours in Cambridgeshire at the end of the month, with lightning strikes thought to be to blame.

It’s bad enough having a power cut when you’re in the comfort of your own home, but what impact do they have on your business? With lost productivity and wasted running costs to consider, it’s vital for business owners to be prepared and ensure their operations keep functioning as effectively as possible during power cuts.  Here, with gas bottle suppliers, Flogas, we look at what causes power cuts and how to prepare your business for them:

Power cuts in the UK

Power outages are common in the UK. In 1972, the miners’ strike caused major power issues and even a state of emergency to be declared, while Storm Frank in 2015 caused the loss of power to around 40,000 properties. Considering the UK has more than 17,000km of electricity cables, there’s a great deal of maintenance to keep on top of, which means a sudden storm or unexpected heatwave can cause significant issues.

There are a few types of power outages that can cause harm to a business’s everyday operations:

• Transient fault: lasting only a few seconds. This is a temporary fault, but power is automatically restored.
• Brownout: reduction in mains power supply that can last for a few days (e.g. lowered light levels) and cause machinery malfunction.
• Blackout: absolute power loss. As the most severe case of power outage, blackouts are often the most costly and difficult to recover from.

According to reports by Climate Central, between 2003 and 2012, 80% of all power outages were caused by weather conditions. Considering its unpredictability, it may be worth preparing your brand for future power cuts today.

How power cuts can affect your business

Of course, in 2018 we rely on power to run our business. This makes any disruption or cut-off of energy all the more damaging. But how do power outages usually interrupt and harm a business?

Data can be lost in even the briefest of delays or interruptions. This may affect your company’s ability to achieve client deadlines on projects, if work and information is irretrievable and thus forcing your staff to start again. Blackouts and brownouts that last one or more days can mean your production lines simply cease to exist in practice. Of course, your staff are there and willing to work, which means they need paying regardless. However, your business won’t be able to create the products it needs to make a profit that day or even break-even. Similarly, if your business relies on a sales department, think of how much revenue you could lose if your team can’t contact people via phone or email to clinch new customer accounts.

A small business can lose up to £800 with just one hour of downtime and larger companies experiencing even greater losses. When Google lost their power in 2013, they experienced losses of £100,000 per minute!

The reasons behind the losses can vary greatly. Not having access to electricity can mean that employees cannot communicate with customers and are therefore losing out on potential sales. For an ecommerce company, they do not have access to their website to monitor sales and client requests. There is also the risk of losing unsaved material, which can be costly to small businesses.

Research found that 23% of IT professionals  believe that IT outage can cost between £10,000 to more than a £1 million an hour! In fact, IT downtime in the UK costs around £3.6 million and 545 productivity hours a year. To work out the average cost of downtime an hour, this is the general formula:

Employee cost per hour x fraction of employees affected by the power cut x average revenue for each hour x fraction of the revenue that was affected by the outage

If this scale of losses in profit and productivity simply isn’t affordable, you can take action to help you alleviate the issue.

How to minimise losses during a power cut

Each business has its own list of priorities. If your brand relies on computers and data — as do most in 2018 at least to some degree — install a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) for all your computers. This will let the device run via its battery and will give the staff enough time, if a blackout happens, to save crucial documents and properly shut down the computer to ensure data is not damaged and can be recovered to keep projects on track. Saving on a cloud is also a great way to keep critical files safe.

The internet is used by all companies to some extent, but during a power cut, crucial connections to the web can be lost. By setting up a MiFi — a device that can operate as a Wi-Fi hotspot — your employees’ devices can connect to an ‘ad-hoc’ network to help you stay online and working in the event of a power cut.

A surge protector is a great purchase to protect your electronic devices and machinery hardware, as a sudden rush of energy can cause you data to be corrupted, as well as an industrial generator. Industrial generators are robust and designed to comply with legal obligations for optimum efficiency in times of need. If your brand relies on the continuous operating of equipment and machinery, it’s vital that you invest in a generator to protect from major productivity and revenue loss as a result of power outages.

Come up with a business continuity plan today to outline what management and workers will do if one occurs and help to minimise the damage a power cut may cause your brand. Do this by creating a team or committee that will determine the specific risks to your business — a small IT company will have different points to consider compared to a large factory — and then draw up a detailed process for mitigating these risks.

It’s important to unplug devices if your business has an interruption of electricity supply. Also, make sure you only use electrical equipment that adheres to regulations set out by the British Standards Institution.

Of course, you can’t avoid a power cuts, but they don’t always have to have a devastating effect on your business. Follow these steps and prepare your company for a blackout situation.

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