COVER STORY
ESSENTIAL PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE
Stephen Peal, Director at PPSPower, discusses the importance of well-tested and maintained backup power in the facilities management industry.
Backup power systems are an essential component for most, if not all modern businesses. Due to rapid technological advancements over the past decade, the increased consumption of power has left the National Grid in an arguably fragile state. In order to combat the large scale effects of unpredictable power cuts, organisations are installing generator and UPS units, which produce constant electricity, in the absence of mains power.
However, a backup power system is only as effective as the maintenance and repair procedure underlining its reliability. Without the correct maintenance checks in place, there is no guarantee that the unit will
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perform efficiently when loss of power occurs. In order to ensure a reliable, operative system, preventative maintenance and repair should be conducted on a regular basis.
TESTING EMERGENCY
POWER SYSTEMS Datacentres and healthcare facilities have some of the best and most thorough procedures for testing their emergency on-site power systems. For obvious reasons, these operations must have 100% confidence in their critical systems, and they invest heavily to insure that these systems will operate as expected, when needed. Large facilities are often regulated and
mandated to have sophisticated test procedures in place.
If you spent thousands of pounds on a car, would you leave it on the drive for a few years and then expect it to perform on a motorway at full speed without any problems?
Testing for large facilities can involve basic testing, which is generally held on a weekly basis, plus much more rigorous testing held quarterly, semi- annually or annually. Mission-critical facilities usually hold extended tests that require the emergency generators to run for as long as four hours under varying loads.
Smaller operators, on the other hand, often develop their own test
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