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Does Your Business Continuity Plan Address Planned Power Outages?

The planned power outages in California last week (see here, here and here) likely cost the California economy well over a billion dollars, closed schools, caused hospitals to scramble to get backup generators and many other things.

Whether you think PG&E did the right thing or not, unfortunately experts say the underlying problems are not going away any time soon.

As businesses become more dependent on computers, the loss of power affects not only the businesses, but their customers and business partners who access those servers.

In addition, regulators are going after businesses who do not have adequate business continuity plans for dealing with things like power outages.

Last week we saw that even when businesses themselves did not lose power, their Internet services went down and for some of those businesses, their cellular backups (or even cell phones) didn’t work.

Why is that?  Because many times Internet facilities need power at the pedestals around town and on poles.  Sometimes that power comes over transmission lines, but other times it is connected to local power.  For the most part, except in major facilities, there is little to no battery or generator backups.

As we move to 5G cellular technology, the number of cell “sites” is going to dramatically multiply and because those sites are small and need to be cheap, they will likely have no battery backup and certainly no generators, so when their source of power goes out, even if your building does not, you will have no cell services and maybe no Internet.  Internet of Things devices that depend on cell service will stop working as well.

So that begs a number of questions?

Note first that this is not limited to California – they just happen to be in the news right now.

• Do you have a business continuity (BC) plan?
• When was the last time it was tested?
• Are  employees trained to operate it?
• Does your building or computer room have backup power?  How long will that backup power last for?  The outages in California last week lasted for days.  A generator with 4 hours worth of fuel will not handle a 4 day outage.
• Does your BC plan address what happens when your power is on but your Internet connection and backup Internet connection go down for days because there is a power outage elsewhere in your city. Last week we saw greatly extended Internet outages after the power was restored due to equipment failure from the power outage.
• Does your business depend on cell service?  Does your BC plan deal with losing that service?
• How do you communicate with your customers about your current status, expected restoration time and how to get the service they expect during the outage.

This problem is not going away any time soon.  The electric grid, Internet services and cellular services in the United States are “Brittle”.  That means that they do not deal well with unexpected perturbations.  In fact,  the PG&E web site kept crashing last week as people tried to find out what was happening with their power.

Assuming you don’t want to put a closed sign on your front door for a few days at a time, you need to plan for this.  Many companies in California were not ready for this last week.

Be prepared!