What is a power glitch and why should I care?

Power glitch? What the heck is a power glitch? Weather-related power interruptions are a year-round issue for businesses in the greater Oklahoma City area. In winter, it’s ice storms; in spring and autumn, it’s thunderstorms, high winds, and tornados; and in summer, it’s storms and high usage of air conditioning equipment.

These interruptions come in various forms: from brownouts when power drops low enough to cause lights to dim but not completely go off to complete outages that last days. In between are the annoying one to 10-second “glitches.”

A power glitch or power error is a sudden and unexpected increase or decrease in the electrical power supplied to a building and, ultimately, to the electrical equipment in that building. Studies show that 443 power glitches occur yearly on a typical electrical line (more than one each day). Each could gravely affect computerized systems, causing equipment damage, data loss, and crashes.

You can protect your equipment and data from these detrimental effects by installing uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). These devices supply regulated power via batteries when the main power source is interrupted. The length of time these will maintain adequate power service to the attached equipment depends on how much power that equipment draws from the battery and the size of the battery in the UPS.

Typically, you’ll want the UPS to keep the machine running long enough for you to back up your data and perform a proper shutdown of the machine. If other equipment is plugged into the UPS, such as a monitor or a local printer, the power consumption of that equipment will also need to be considered when selecting the size of the UPS. Servers draw significantly more power than desktop computers. Good quality UPS will protect your equipment from the detrimental effects of power errors, including glitches, surges, and brownouts.

Don’t be a victim of the next power error. Remember, studies show that one will happen on every power line at least once each day!