Let’s face it, running a profitable, resilient business is nearly impossible without dependable access to electricity. Unfortunately, relying on today’s failing power grid presents a risky proposition as outages worsen nationwide.
Aging infrastructure, severe weather and strained capacity make blackouts and brownouts more prevalent by the year. No enterprise remains immune from the fallout. Spoiled goods, delayed orders, costly diesel generators – it all cuts into the bottom line.
True resilience requires freeing your business from dependence on such a clearly unreliable system. The good news? New distributed clean energy technologies finally make securing your own supply of electricity for business achievable and affordable.
Why Reliable Electricity Matters for Businesses
Any length of downtime can bring steep consequences that hurt your business operations and revenue. But unreliable infrastructure also has hidden costs that slowly bleed your budget over time. Let’s review why consistent electricity is so vital.
Revenue loss
Losing power means ceasing business functions and sales. If you run a restaurant, every minute the ovens and lights are off costs you customers. For a manufacturer, it’s lost production. Even short 15-minute blips disrupt workflows and translate to money walking out the door.
And longer outages lasting hours or days? Catastrophic. Most businesses can’t sustain extended periods without power before permanent impacts set in.
Inventory & equipment damage
Some inventory and equipment don’t fare well when electricity fails. Freezers and refrigerators will only maintain safe temperatures so long without power. Production machinery forced into sudden shutdowns face harm. Delicate electronics are vulnerable to surges when electricity returns. Fail to keep things running, and you risk product losses and costly repairs.
Reputational harm
How customers perceive your business also takes a hit when the lights go out. Will shoppers return to the store that frequently closes early or has dark aisles? If you’re known for delayed orders or inferior quality resulting from power issues, damage gets done. New prospects might look elsewhere believing you aren’t reliable.
Worker productivity
Even short outages disrupt established workflows and processes. Time gets wasted re-starting equipment, rebooting computers, and reorienting teams. Workers sitting idle still represent payroll expenses. Consistent electricity access keeps everyone productive.
Expensive backup costs
Most facilities rely on diesel generators for backup power. But those carry huge fuel, maintenance and environmental costs. Solar panels with battery storage are cleaner but space intensive. And neither actually resolves grid reliability challenges long-term. Band-aid backup solutions get very expensive over time.
Technologies That Protect Against Unreliable Electricity
Transitioning from the grid to your own onsite power system is easier than ever before. Advances in distributed generation technologies now allow facilities to become self-reliant for their electricity needs. Let’s explore your options.
Fuel cells
Fuel cells generate highly efficient, ultra-clean electricity through an electrochemical process. Think of them like a battery that never runs out. They provide resilient baseload power 24/7 by converting natural gas or biogas into power.
Fuel cells boast the highest electrical efficiency of any technology available today – nearly 60% compared to 30-45% for combustion generators. That means converting more of your fuel into usable electricity rather than wasted heat.
You can opt to use renewable biogas for truly carbon-neutral power. But even when using natural gas, fuel cells emit virtually no pollutants that would require strict air quality permitting.
Finally, fuel cells provide rock-solid reliability not matched by solar, wind or batteries. Their redundancy ensures resilience through storms, wildfires and grid failures. In fact, by pairing fuel cells with solar panels you get the best of both worlds – sustainable and dependable electricity.
Battery storage
Lithium-ion batteries offer businesses a straightforward path to store electricity. They can be charged slowly from the grid or renewable sources. The stored energy then discharges to provide backup or off-grid power when needed.
Batteries are easy to install, scalable, and maintenance-free. However, you might have to deal with a few constraints. Charge capacity degrades over time requiring replacement every 5-10 years. Extreme weather also impacts performance. Finally, most battery systems only support 2-8 hours of power before needing recharge.
That makes batteries ideal for short outages or shaving peak facility loads. But for true energy resilience, most businesses need a technology that can keep operations flowing indefinitely.
Microgrids
A microgrid is an onsite power network that can efficiently control multiple electricity sources. It combines technologies like fuel cells, solar panels, batteries and backup generators.
The big advantage of a microgrid is independence from the main utility grid. The networked power sources work together to provide uninterrupted electricity. If the main grid goes down or becomes unstable, the microgrid isolates itself and keeps supplying power.
Microgrids also optimize usage of the different generation assets. Solar panels provide clean energy during sunlight hours while batteries discharge overnight. The fuel cell serves as the always-on baseload to handle your 24/7 operational needs.
This ability to utilize multiple complementary technologies makes microgrids ideal for resilient electricity. And their modular scalability allows incremental capacity as your business grows.
Practical Actions to Deal with Unreliable Electricity
Now that we’ve covered the technologies, let’s discuss practical steps you can take to address unreliable electricity and build resilience:
Get visibility on your facility’s electrical load profile
Understanding hourly and peak consumption patterns is vital when right-sizing an onsite power system. Monitoring tools can map your usage trends over time.
Identify operational must-haves during outages
Know which equipment absolutely must run continuously despite grid failures. This helps determine the minimal capacity your system requires.
Explore incentives and financing assistance
Both national and local jurisdictions offer grants, tax breaks and subsidized loans to help facilities transition to cleaner distributed energy. These can improve payback periods.
Start with a professionally-designed feasibility study
Have engineers model integration of technologies like fuel cells or solar panels into your site and operations. A good study helps build the optimal, cost-effective solution unique to your facility. It also refines budgeting and projections.
Scale in phases if needed
While a turnkey system implementation is fastest, a phased approach can work too. If capital is limited, start with one technology, like a battery or fuel cell, then expand overtime as resources allow.
Conclusion
At this point the question probably isn’t if your business will face a grid outage but when. And in today’s world you simply cannot afford disruptions to operations or revenue. Not when the stakes are so high.
By leveraging modern distributed energy technologies tailored to your business’s needs, you can finally resolve electricity reliability issues for good. Avoid costs stemming from outages, sustain quality customer service, keep your team productive and protect the bottom line. The grid may be increasingly unreliable, but your business doesn’t have to be.
