The opening weekend of the 2017 College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, got off to an interesting start. In addition to the Fan Fest events, the traveling display from the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Ferris wheel coming into town, Mother Nature also brought her own kind of excitement. On the Friday before the first games, the day when everything from watching team practices to the fireworks show was free, the weather took a pretty unexpected turn. Although some thunderstorms and rain had been forecast, by 8:00 pm it was evident that this would not be a calm end to the day.
The straight line winds that were recorded in excess of 90 miles an hour brought down trees which, in turn, took out power lines across the city. Within an hour of the heavy winds and rains starting, as many as 75,000 homes were without power. And while some were only without electricity for a few minutes, many waited as long as 12 or 18 hours before their power was restored. Any talks that anyone had previously had about generator services came in to play. For anyone who had taken the time and spent the money to purchase residential or commercial generators, the investment paid off. A simple look at your back window, for instance, could immediately show you which houses would not need to be worrying about throwing out valuable refrigerated foods the next day because they had a back up source for their own power.
Generator Preventative Maintenance Allows Companies to be Ready for Worst Case Scenarios
For the data centers across the city, the generator preventative maintenance plans paid off. At one location, for instance, the monthly maintenance checks that they did allowed them to be confident that the data center would keep working without interruption. Specifically, the center runs a test every month where they dump the load over to the backup generator on a fairly regulag basis.
The last time a real outage occurred was back in 2012, but the engineers were confident that they had a reliable plan in place. The generator installation itself is so big it takes up one whole wall at the data center. The size and the planning, however paid off as this one particular site experienced an outage that lasted from 7:00 pm on Friday until 4:00 pm on Saturday. Nearly the size of a semi truck trailer the backup generator burned 179 gallons of diesel fuel an hour. They had 3000 gallons of fuel stored on site, and had 3000 gallons delivered. Fortunately, the next delivery of another 3000 was cancelled as soon as the power returned. The attention to a generator preventative maintenance plan enabled the company to run on a uninterrupted power source (UPS) and no power generating source even knew a difference.
Residential Generators Help Home Owners Stay Comfortable and Safe
Given the extreme weather conditions that we now experience, it should come as no surprise that 66% of all homes in america have air conditioners. In fact, air conditioners cost U.S. homeowners more than $11 billion each year, and use nearly 5% of all the electricity produced in the country. With that said, a major power outage that interrupts that creature comfort can cause a real problem. For this reason, home owners, as well as commercial building owners, benefit from the purchase of a generator and the suggested generator preventative maintenance.
Whether you are in the College World Series location of Omaha, or you are living on the east coast and suffer the consequences of hurricanes, the decision to have a backup generator can provide you the resources you need during power outages.