Power Reliability Increasingly Important to Business Health, Report Finds

From same-day shipping to in-home virtual assistants, instant gratification has become the societal norm. Companies are being forced to adjust their operations to meet consumers’ expectations and ensure they’re delivering the right product or service at the right time, every time.

However, just one small power blink can lead to dropped connections, wasted time, and lost transactions. And these blinks are happening frequently enough that businesses are turning to on-site power resources as backup. Indeed, businesses have a growing dependency on power, but they’re not getting the power reliability they need from their utility providers.

The “2019 State of Commercial & Industrial Power Reliability Report” (C&I Report), developed by S&C Electric Company, surveyed the leaders of business with average yearly revenues of $4 billion or more about their reliability concerns and how power affects long-term business success. The report uncovered three trends:

• Steady Power is Vital
  Whether it’s a health care facility that needs power to provide critical care or a manufacturing plant that requires power to meet production demands, reliable and sustainable power capabilities are crucial to commercial and industrial companies that serve millions of consumers every day. One in 3 companies reported being negatively affected by a mere blink in power.
  
  Business leaders understand how crucial steady power is to everyday operations, and they feel the impact of even short outages. However, most utilities do not track power blinks–when power is lost for a moment due to dropped connections–so they are not actively seeking to reduce them, causing the problem to continue.
  
  
• Reliability Issues Prevent Achieving Business Goals
  As business leaders map out growth strategies, they’re identifying power reliability as crucial for success. 
  
  However, in increasingly competitive and digitized environments, one-quarter of businesses believe power reliability issues prevent them from achieving their business goals, including sustainability initiatives, performance benchmarks, and economic growth.
  
  As more companies realize there’s a gap between their power-reliability needs and their utility’s ability to meet them, the majority are turning away from utility-based solutions to protect their business from outage-induced impacts on revenues and operations.
  
  

• Reliable Power is Crucial for Future Business Health
  Business leaders are projecting their companies’ future needs today. The impact of existing outages—both long and short—have left many skeptical about the state of power reliability. One-quarter of companies doubt their utility provider will be able to support their long-term growth.
  
  As a result, forward-thinking companies are calling for utilities to plan for the capabilities and enhancements they feel are critical to not only their businesses’ success, but to the betterment of entire U.S. economy.

For other businesses, now is the time to start conversations with utility providers about how they can best serve their needs. To learn more about the impact of power reliability on businesses’ health, read the full “2019 State of Commercial & Industrial Power Reliability Report”.