Home Office Power and Equipment Protection

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Cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-ground lightning is just one of many threats to home office power and equipment. A combination of protection devices will help maintain your office equipment and data when power outages and dips occur. Lightning Hazards Several things affect the power that supplies our home offices. First, there's the obvious: lightning. Those with home offices in Florida may be particularly aware of the risks. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the highest frequency of cloud-to-ground lightning in the U.S. is in Florida, between Tampa and Orlando. Other areas that see a lot of lightning are the areas in the western mountains, along the Gulf Coast and inland west to Texas, along the Atlantic coast in the Southeast, and in regions along the Pacific West Coast. In the continental 48 states, according to NOAA, at least 30 million points on the ground are struck each year in the U.S. on average. But equipment doesn't need a direct hit to sustain damage. Even cloud-to-cloud lightning can cause problems. A spike from a nearby lightning strike may travel through power or telephone lines or enter a building and transfer through wires and plumbing—going straight into your computer, printer, or phone system. Power Demands and Outages Surges, brownouts, blackouts—these terms have become common in some areas of the country. Many East Coast states deal with brownouts, or drops in voltage. Other parts of the country are more familiar with blackouts, total power cutoffs. All can wreak havoc on the equipment in your home office. A surge, or increase in voltage, stresses the delicate components of computers and other electronic devices. Each incidence degrades the components a bit, making them more vulnerable to interference or damage. It also shortens their life expectancy and reliability. A brownout starves computers and other equipment of the power they need. The results can be frozen keyboards, loss of work in progress, system crashes, and lost data. Brownouts also hasten the deterioration of electrical equipment. A blackout will result in the loss of work-in-progress and may mean crashing hard drives, destroying stored data. Combined Power Protection Protecting against power anomalies, from service entrance panel to point of use, is important. That protection can be accomplished with surge protectors, a battery-backup uninterruptible power supply (UPS), and a hard-wired protector next to the circuit breaker.

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