As part of the Des Moines electrical grid system, our energy system is without doubt, reliable and trustworthy. But a reliable system doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take precautions. There are still many situations where a sudden power outage or loss of access to electricity can be disastrous, whether it’s a medical need or simple some home protection equipment, an outage at the wrong time can lead to expensive future consequences.
Emergency Use
Medical – What springs to mind first is medical equipment. Whether it’s home-support systems for the elderly or a sleep apnea machine, an untimely outage during the night can have disastrous effects. Any home where medical equipment is used, especially with life-saving/supporting devices, should have an automatic standby generator installed.
Storm Protection – Storms and flooding happen. Sump pumps and crawl space water pumps are there to keep our homes from flooding. Unfortunately, they do still require power. When a storm becomes bad enough, there’s often a chance that power for the neighborhood will go out due to a transformer failure or other grid event. When water starts seeping into your home, you don’t want to be caught without a pump to remove it, even if it’s just a manual shop-vac. A standby generator will ensure power in the event of a weather emergency.
Security – Battery backups are useful, but what happens when the power in an area has been down for hours on end? Maybe your phone has finally run down or the batteries in your security system are worn out after so many years. With a generator on standby, you’ll have access to power to get your phone back online and restore your security system to a function state.
Automatic or Manual Generator?
It’s clear that there are plenty of situations that warrant emergency power. For many cases, these issues could be solved with a local power support (think solar panels) but usually the emergency power you need can’t be supplied in this way. A grid event caused by a storm will block sunlight from solar cells as well. An outage at night, when you need emergency power, won’t be supported by solar either. As useful as solar panels are for cutting costs, they don’t have the emergency support provided by a generator.
Take stock of when you might need a generator to be available. If you feel you only need emergency power to run things occasionally and that intermittent outages aren’t a substantial risk, use a manual generator. Manual generators give you control over when they run, but they will require you to be there to turn it on.
If your concerns are about maintaining energy support in a crisis where you’re not physically present, use an automatic generator. Automatic standby generators will trigger as soon as power is lost from the grid, providing crucial support in storms, night time grid events, or loss of power while you’re away on long vacations.
The benefit to a manual type transfer switch is usually the ease of installation, cheaper cost, and reliability. The downfall of a manual transfer switch is that person must be present to engage or disengage the switch. This requires a person to be onsite to perform the transfer of power. Automatic switches do not require a person to present when emergency power is needed. This transfer of power happens without human interruption all by itself and no one needs to be present. The automatic transfer can be extremely important when supplying power to items such as sump pumps, heating, wells, medical equipment such as oxygen machines and various breathing machines.
How Can Custom Electrical Services Help you?
Custom Electrical Services is your one stop generator shop for generator sales and installation. We offer a variety of generator solutions for your power needs. From portable generators to large standby residential and commercial generators. We can sell, maintain, and service a generator for partial / whole home or business back up power. As well as automatic standby and off grid generators. We can sell, service, and install any size generator regardless of application. Custom Electrical Services is central Iowa’s premiere Generac authorized dealer and standby generator repair shop.
We’ll work with you to provide the best size generator. It can be difficult to decide just how much emergency power you need, but our expert technicians will guide you at each step of the way. And, as central Iowa’s Generac authorized sales and service dealer, we have access to the full Generac line of equipment and parts. We can repair and service your existing generator as well as perform scheduled maintenance task.
For the best in quality electrical repair work and installations, contact the professionals at Custom Electric! Be sure to check back here each week for helpful advice, news, and guides or follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
