When thinking about National Preparedness Month, you may have evacuation plans in mind, know what supplies you need and have a set process for if an emergent situation arises. Making sure your industrial Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system is ready for an emergent outage is no exception.
Below are some tips we have for preparing your AMETEK Solidstate Controls systems for an emergency.
1. Assess Your System and Needs – It’s important to check out your system and expectations of it during an emergency.
First, be mindful of where your system is located and if that location my contribute to system issues during an emergency; for example, is the system in a low area that could be prone to flooding.
Second, determine whether you will need the load circuits to remain powered during an emergency.
- If the UPS system is required, leave it in normal operation.
- If the UPS system is not required, put the system into bypass operation and disconnect the battery. The most common issue after an emergency occurs when batteries have been over-discharged while they were left connected. There may be circuits within the UPS that can drain the battery, even while on bypass. If a battery is drained too low, the manufacturer recommends that they be replaced.
Third, know if your system and batteries are ready to perform by keeping track of your system’s history, know your past maintenance schedules and diagnostics and stay up on your annual maintenance.
2. Preventive Maintenance – Make sure your system is functioning to its full capability by performing manufacture recommended preventive maintenance on all your systems. We’ve developed a lifetime preventive maintenance schedule based on our own testing, field experience and supplier recommendations. This schedule includes annual maintenance events, which provide system cleaning, testing, calibration, and parts replacement if identified as in need or as part of predictive replacement. All our maintenance is performed by one of our factory-trained service engineers and can help provide peace of mind that your system is ready to protect and carry your load through voltage transients, voltage instability, blackouts, brownouts, electrical noise, frequency deviation and more.
3. Spare Parts – Having critical spare parts and components on hand can help limit downtime in an emergency. We are happy to help you assess your spare parts inventory and help you determine if you should keep stock of spares such as printed circuit boards, semiconductors, fuses, fans, pilot lights and more. If you find yourself missing a critical component, AMETEK Solidstate Controls stocks over 10,000 spare parts, so we can quickly meet many replacement parts needs. Click here to learn more about spare parts.
4. Emergency Support – We understand all the preparing in the world sometimes isn’t enough. To help you during an emergency, we offer 24/7 support with our factory-trained technical support team. They can help you with the operation or service of your system(s) over the phone, 1-800-222-9079.
5. Emergency Repairs – There may be occasions when it is essential to dispatch a technician to your site to quickly resolve the issue. We will dispatch a technician to your site to inspect and repair your system as quickly as possible. Visit our emergency support page to learn more about repairs.
Take some time this month to think about your critical industrial UPS systems and create a plan so that you are prepared for any emergency your facility may experience in the future. If you’d like to discuss how you can more effectively prepare your system through maintenance, spare parts and emergency support and repairs, please contact us.