In 2019, a large California power provider announced that it would cut power to communities in times of extreme wildfire risk, and the ensuing blackouts caused major business disruptions and economic losses. This document describes outage impacts and presents options for installing backup power equipment at small and mid-sized businesses. While the full economic impacts of California’s planned outages may not yet be fully realized, the effects on small and mid-sized businesses demonstrated a consistent pattern. Businesses without access to backup power closed and languished; those that stayed open did so by accessing secondary (sometimes off-site) power sources.
Key words: large building controls/automation, intelligent buildings, property management, system integrator, smart grid, energy management