Even if your facility has a continuous generator that is always working, you need a standby generator to pick up the slack if something happens to the continuous generator. When your business relies on having constant power, you need to do everything you can to cover all your bases. That means backing up what you might have already considered a backup.

A continuous generator that is the sole source of power for something should be treated like you'd treat the main power grid. Even if your facility uses regular city-provided power for most applications, you shouldn't treat the continuous generator as something invincible.

You Don't Want That Tiny Chance Stopping Your Work

When you have your own generator, life seems good. You control that power source, so it's not subject to a faraway utility company's decisions to cut power for whatever reason. And a well-maintained generator can keep going for a long time without interruption. There's really only a tiny chance that the generator will cut out. But you don't want to take that chance. If you've got a generator powering something, that's a sign that you need continuous power fed to that item. If the generator has that rare failure, then you have no power going to the item that you wanted continuously powered. So, you need to set up a backup generator to take over should the main generator fail.

Power Outages Are Becoming More Common

Keep in mind that simply connecting the item to the regular power grid may not be the best answer. Power outages due to older wiring, natural disasters, power-demand overloads, and safety shutoffs are becoming a lot more common. Maybe the main generator fails, so you connect the equipment to the main power grid only for the wiring in the facility to be unable to provide enough power, or for the weather to cause an outage. Again, a standby generator can step in when these events coincide.

The Standby Can Provide Extra Power, Too

One use of a standby generator that isn't generally talked about is that it could potentially provide extra power, too, such as when you get new equipment. This is in addition to when the main generator is undergoing maintenance. If you get new equipment that you want to test out before connecting to other generators or to the main power supply, the backup generator might be a convenient source of temporary power.

What you want to do is to create a safety net for power, so if something fails or has to be taken offline, you have another source of power that you can switch to immediately. A standby generator is perfect for this, even if you have your own generators already at work.

Contact a company like Scott's Emergency Lighting & Power Generation Inc for more information.

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