As hurricane season ramps up here in the United States, your facility’s preparedness plan for a potential storm should be front of mind. Part of this plan should include knowing the best ways to prepare your AMETEK Solidstate Controls’ Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems for an emergency shutdown and the potential situation where you may need to evacuate the facility.
How can you ensure you’ve taken every step and precaution possible to prevent issues with your UPS System during a worst-case situation?
- Conduct a study prior to hurricane season to determine whether you will need the load circuits to remain powered during the storm:
- If the UPS system is required during the storm, leave it in normal operation.
- If the UPS system is not required during the storm, put the system into bypass operation and disconnect the battery. The most common issue after a storm occurs is the batteries have been over discharged while 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 replacing them.
- Be mindful of where your critical UPS systems are located. If your system is in a low spot or an area prone to flooding, try to move the system to higher ground or an area that hasn’t previously flooded, if possible.
- If the location of your system does flood, contact our experienced field service engineer team. Depending on the flooding circumstances, our team has had past success in restoring systems at our facility by performing extensive cleaning and replacing parts if needed. Please note, we can only attempt to restore a unit that was not connected to a power source at the time of the flooding.
- 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 provides system cleaning, testing, calibration, and parts replacement if identified as in need or as part of predictive replacement. Performing annual preventive maintenance as part of your hurricane preparedness plan can help ensure your system and batteries is functioning to its full capability and ready to perform in an emergent situation.
- Keeping critical spare parts and components for your systems can help limit your downtime if you’re faced with an emergency. Our team is happy to assess your spare parts inventory and make recommendation on if you should keep stock of spares such as printed circuit boards, semiconductors, fuses, fans, pilot lights and more.
- We understand emergencies happen and we offer a variety of support solutions to help get your system back up and running as quickly as possible:
- Our factory trained technical support team is available 24/7. They can help with the operation or service of your system over the phone, 1-800-222-9079.
- Some occasions may need immediate attention, with our emergency repairs we will dispatch a technician to your site to inspect and repair your system as quickly as possible.
We hope these tips will help you better prepare your UPS systems in case you find your facility at threat from a hurricane this season. If you’d like to discuss your preparedness plan and how you can more effectively prepare your system, please contact us.