How We Protect Our Small Business

March 2, 2017 Written by JohnTech

If you’ve looked at our social media platforms in the past few days, you would have seen that our office complex was hit from the EF-1 tornado that hit Franklin on Wednesday, March 1st of this year. Thankfully, we did not fall victim to the old adage, “The plumber’s house always leaks.”

Aside from the visual damage to the surrounding cars from damaged trees, the utility power was lost to our office for an uncertain amount of time and we continued having power quality issues for the better part of the day. Even with all of that damage, Johnston Technologies remained up and running. Some of our neighbors, however, did not.

So, what was the difference? How did we stay functional while others did not?

To start, we have an in-house small business server that helps run all of our day-to-day operations, as well as providing storage for important files and tools that are needed for long-term business operation. This in-house server is protected with a double conversion on-line Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) that has enough battery runtime to cover up to 99% of power outages in Tennessee. Since the power outage that happened on Wednesday was not in the 1 percentile, our server never lost power.

We do not just protect our server. We also have a line interactive UPS at every computer station in our office. These units provide considerably less battery runtime, but still will cover the majority of power outages. Even with less battery runtime, our computer stations never lost power, either.

These systems allowed our office to get straight to work, when we arrived in the morning.

What are the main differences in our two UPSs?

Our double conversion on-line UPS that protects the server converts the utility AC power into DC power by way of a rectifier, charges the batteries, and then converts back into AC power by way of an inverter. This conversion process eliminates any power quality issues and produces a clean power sine wave to our server. Once utility power fails, the UPS will draw power from the batteries with no transfer time. Any power quality issues will be solved by converting the utility power from AC to DC and back to AC.

The line interactive UPS that backs up all of our computer stations utilizes a transfer switch that, when closed, will provide utility power directly to the UPS inverter and then to the load. During an outage, the transfer switch opens, drawing power from the batteries to the inverter, and then to the load.

Since our customers do not allow themselves downtime, neither do we. We understand that every minute of downtime can cost both our customers and our business money. We may not be backing up millions of dollars in equipment, but we do not allow ourselves a drop in production.

We are just one of 563,533 small businesses in TN, as of 2015. We venture to guess that any downtime affects those businesses the same as they affect ours. If you are not protected from power outages, but would like to be, give us a call for a free consultation. Don’t let the weather lose your company money!