For the past five years, RoseWater has discussed the effects of poor power quality on the equipment you sell and ultimately on the satisfaction of our clients. And as we add more automation, which require more microprocessors, the equipment failures become more consequential to everyday life. Over those years we have heard all sorts of reasons as to why power quality is virtually impossible to explain to clients.
- Clients believe that there are no power problems in their area.
- Clients believe that it is the utility’s responsibility to provide perfect power.
- Clients believe the utility can provide quality power 100% of the time.
- Clients believe that reboots and data losses are caused by poor equipment or poor installations.
Just to name a few.
Recently I had the pleasure of having Chris Wallace of Powervar as a guest on my podcast, the Next Generation of Energy available on Apple and Spotify (shameless plug). Powervar manufactures and sells power conditioning equipment in the commercial world. I wanted Chris as a guest to explore whether he faced similar obstacles to awareness and acceptance of power quality issues in the commercial world as those we face in the residential community.
The similarities were astounding.
As the commercial world became more dependent on point of purchase computers, large scale data storage and analysis, the consequences of a “computer glitch” became more and more severe.
At first, the clients blamed the equipment or the installation, never the power company. “We don’t have power problems in our area”.
This sounds all too familiar.
Client by client for years Powervar built a business based on minimizing the number of “glitches”. Those who installed power conditioning equipment saw they had less problems and down times were virtually eliminated.
The next hurdle was “Why does this equipment cost so much?”
In the commercial world value can be measured monetarily.
In the commercial world, large companies like Starbucks and Chick-fil-A now consider power quality assurance essential and take ownership that they are responsible to provide that service to their clients to eliminate downtime. Downtime is not just a financial loss from the transactions that cannot be completed. It reflects poorly on your brand and diminishes customer loyalty which creates a greater loss.
It took more than a decade for power quality assurance to become commonplace in the commercial world.
In the residential world, acceptance is just in the beginning stages.
The reason for this article is to encourage you to pay attention to power quality, energy management and storage. We commonly see products accepted by the commercial sector become commonplace in the residential sector just a few years down the line.
Be a leader, not a follower, and take advantage of important trend before more of your competitors begin doing so. Your clients will thank you.