Disaster Recovery Plan: The Role of a Generator in Your Business DRP

The discovery of electricity almost three centuries ago revolutionized every sector of the economy. Today, it's not possible to keep any industry or business operations without a power source. While most businesses are already connected to the power grid, it's unreliable. This is particularly true, bearing in mind the increasing frequency of natural disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes, coupled with the aging grid system that causes frequent and costly grid outages. Therefore, it's crucial to have an operative disaster recovery plan (DRP) for your business.

A DRP is a detailed and well-documented set of actions, measures, or procedures to be followed amid a disaster to recover from it on time — as well as protect key business assets, including employees. The disaster plan should loop across all staff members so that everyone can know what part they should play when mitigating and recovering from a disaster.

Most of the time, when the term "disaster recovery plan" is mentioned to business managers and owners, they think of cybersecurity. However, your disaster plan should integrate how to recover from power outages. Power outages can disrupt business operations, cause high downtime costs, and wreak havoc on your IT environment.

Building a Power Disaster Recovery Plan

When creating a disaster plan, you have two options — rent or buy. Installing a new or used generator power system is a more permanent solution. The second option is to work with a generator rental service like Power System Services to rent a generator whenever there's a grid outage. To create an effective emergency power plan, you should follow a simple step as follows:

1. Have a person who is in charge of the power recovery plan
2. Run an analysis of your business operations you'd want to keep running in the event of an outage
3. Determine the suitable generator size to keep these critical operations running

Buy vs. Rent: Which Option Is Better?

Sincerely speaking, the answer narrows down to your unique business requirements. Installing a permanent backup power system has many benefits. With an effective generator maintenance schedule, you can be sure that your industrial backup generator will be ready to automatically provide power whenever the grid goes off. This enables you to keep your critical systems such as computers, lighting, communication, and other vital operations running uninterrupted until when the grid power is restored. A permanent power solution also allows:

• Minimal downtime costs: The cost of downtime for even a few hours is something you should not risk as they cut down on your profits and lower productivity
• Protect data: Your company data, as well as customer data, should be a guarded asset. For instance, customers want to know that their data is secure and accessible even in the midst of a power outage. There is no better way to achieve this than installing a new or used industrial diesel generator. Yourself, you wouldn't like to leave your digital assets vulnerable because of a blackout.

The only puzzle when installing a permanent generator system is the upfront cost. But this isn't comparable with the long-term benefits the system brings. To ensure your permanent generator is always ready, you should have a working maintenance routine.

If your organization would like to take the rental path, you'll need to create an efficient disaster plan with clear roles on who does what and when. You need the plan to have procedures and guidelines on how to quickly acquire the rental generator and connect it to the wiring system. This means that you need comprehensive pre-planning and electrical works.

Besides, getting a rental generator matching your unique power needs can be difficult during disasters when many businesses are also trying to source the same from your local rental generator company. And the generator logistics and shipping also take time before you have one at your facility. Therefore, it's prudent to invest your money in a permanent backup power system whenever possible.

No matter your choice, you'd want nothing short of a certified electrician when installing your generator. A qualified electrician can accurately determine your power requirements to help you acquire a generator that can serve you.

The Key Takeaway

Every smart business should have a power disaster plan as part of its broader disaster recovery plan. A business disaster plan helps you eliminate the effects of a power outage by cutting downtime and keeping your operations running and employees safe.

You can get the assistance you need to create an effective business disaster plan at Power System Services. Our experts will help determine your generator size requirements and help install a generator that'll help you stand out from your competitors during disasters. Get in touch today to get started.

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