As we approach spring storm and summer hurricane season, it’s important to consider if your facility is prepared for a severe weather event that may cause power loss. AMETEK Solidstate Controls is in the business of ensuring continuity of electrical power and we can help during storm season in a multitude of ways.
New equipment to protect your critical applications
Do gray and stormy days have you worried about a power loss abruptly shutting down your critical applications? We have been protecting critical loads from voltage transients, voltage instability, blackouts and brownouts for more than 60 years. We build our Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems, inverts, power conditioners, battery chargers and other equipment with reliability in mind. Our main goal is to ensure up-time and continuity of electrical power for your facility.
View our full offering of customizable equipment here.
Are you maintaining your existing equipment?
A spring cleaning of your existing AMETEK Solidstate Controls’ systems can go a long way in ensuring they are running at peak performance in case of an outage. Through our testing, field experience and supplier recommendations, we have developed a lifetime preventive maintenance schedule for all our equipment. Our 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. Consistently performing preventive maintenance as part of your storm and hurricane preparedness plan gives you peace of mind that the system and batteries are functioning to their full capabilities and ready to perform in an emergent situation.
Check out our service offerings here.
Preparations for an impending storm
Besides making sure you’re up to date on preventive maintenance, here are a few tips for preparing for an impending storm and a potential situation where you may need to evacuate the facility and shut your systems down.
- 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 in an area prone to flooding, try to move the system to higher ground or an area that hasn’t previously flooded, if possible.
- 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 recommendations on if you should keep stock of spares such as printed circuit boards, semiconductors, fuses, fans, pilot lights and more. View our spare parts services here.
A storm hit us and things didn’t go well, what should we do?
We understand that even with a preparedness plan in place and appropriate actions taken, emergent situations can still arise. We offer a variety of solutions to help get your systems 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 situations 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.
- 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.
If you’d like to discuss new equipment to help back up your critical applications during a power loss or want to consult our service team on how to prepare your existing systems for this storm and hurricane season, contact us.