There is no point spending thousands of dollars on Generators, Transfer Switches and Uninterruptible Power Supplies if you never test that they work under real-world conditions.

All too often companies get their equipment regularly maintained but are hesitant to sign off on live testing programs because they fear it won't work.  Well guess what, if it doesn't work during a supervised test it wasn't going to work at 3am when a drunk driver hits a power pole down the road.  At least during a supervised test you've made people aware that there is a risk of an outage and you have qualified staff on site and ready to respond.

Regular system integrity testing is the only way to ensure that your protection systems are doing what they are meant to.  Power Protect recommend conducting 2 tests per year for all critical systems, ideally they should be scheduled around the coldest and hottest times of the year so equipment is being operated at their extremes.

Some common mistakes when conducting system integrity tests are

• Running up the generators manually before starting the test
• Manually operating transfer switches
• Operating system load at a reduced rate
• Postponing a test because it is too hot/cold

None of these things happen under real-world failures, so doing these things reduce the value of the testing.

Power Protect can assist with planning your testing, including provision and connection of load bank systems, and detailed reporting on system performance.