Corrections or additions?
This article by Kathleen McGinn Spring was prepared for the May 8,
2002 edition of
U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Protect Yourself With A Backup Generator
Driving northeast from sunny Trenton on the morning
of September 5, 2001, I encountered a puzzle as I approached
Princeton.
Traffic was backed up much more than it normally is, yet there was
no sign of an accident.
The first clue to the reason for the unusual traffic jams was a pile
of newly-sawed logs next to the curb near the Theological Seminary.
There were also branches on the grounds of the Princeton Borough
complex,
and around the corner, on Alexander Road, there were still more
branches.
Strange. There had been no storm in Trenton, not even a little wind
or rain.
As I turned from Alexander Road onto Roszel Road, I was astounded
to find that the road was closed. Ditching my car in a nearby parking
lot, I walked the rest of the way to my office, passing PSE&G crews
on the way. In the drive of my building, at 12 Roszel Road, an
electrical
generator, knocked from its pole the previous evening, was blocking
the way. Inside the offices of U.S. 1, it was dark, and Richard K.
Rein, the paper’s publisher, was sending employees home. Without
juice,
there were no computers, and without computers there was no way to
get any work done.
“It doesn’t take a terrorist to knock out power,” says
Robert
Griffith, founder of An-Mar Electrical Contractor in Hamilton,
a company that has just started installing Coleman gas generators.
“It could be a hurricane, a car accident, lightening.” A
sergeant
in the National Guard, Griffith had been at Fort Dix earlier in the
day on which we spoke, a cloudy day with drizzle, but a day without
dramatic weather. “The power went out,” he says. “Why?
Who knows. It could have been anything.”
The building where he was working at Fort Dix did have some back-up
power. Some lights stayed on, but there wasn’t enough power to keep
computers, fax machines, and copiers on. “For three hours we came
to a stand still,” he says. “They were panicking. As it got
hotter, they were afraid the servers would go out.” He says the
National Guard did have enough back-up power for essential tasks,
and that none of its public service roles were jeopardized. Still,
the sudden loss of power hurt productivity.
At our newspaper, which did not have back-up power on that day in
early-September, the loss of electricity was crippling. The daily
flow of faxes was cut off. There was no word processing, no page
lay-out,
no access to database information, no E-mail, no light in interior
offices, and not even telephones. The lines were still open but the
phones on the desks were controlled by a PC.
Stores, small businesses, and households all are addicted to
electricity.
And for the most part, it is taken for granted. When his National
Guard colleagues started to fret about their servers, Griffith
suggested
that they turn on some fans. In much the same way, home owners,
deprived
of television news during a blackout, routinely try to flip on the
radio, whether or not it operates on electricity. So much of what
we depend on for communication, security, commerce, and entertainment
runs on electricity that we don’t think about it — until the
lights
go out.
Griffith decided to include a service that would keep those lights
on when he read that Coleman had decided to stop distributing its
gas-powered generators through Home Depot stores. Home Depot, he says,
encouraged home owners to install the generators themselves rather
than hire contractors to do the work. He says Coleman decided this
was dangerous, and wanted its generators installed by professionals.
He contacted Coleman, and the company agreed to include his company
in its roster of installers.
Griffith graduated from Hamilton High School in 1966 and served in
Vietnam as a Navy gunner. After leaving the Navy, he worked as a
corrections
officer, and received a commendation for saving a fellow officer
during
a rebellion. “Inmates were beating him with ankle irons,”
he recalls. “I attacked the inmates.” How many? “There
were five of them,” he says. At some point during the melee, he
noticed that one of his arms was “dangling.” Hit by one of
the irons, it was broken.
Enough was enough, and he left the corrections system in the mid-1980s
to learn the electrical trade from his uncle, Les Hutchinson, a
Trenton
electrician. In the late-1980s, Griffith organized his own company,
An-Mar, which he recently incorporated. He has two sons, Robert, who
is now serving with the peace keeping mission in Sarajevo, and Brian,
a Navy Reservist who is working on his college degree. Griffith
expects
both of his sons to join An-Mar soon.
Gas-powered generators are a new line for An-Mar, but Griffith expects
them to account for 30 percent of his business before long. He offers
a primer on what the generators can do, and how a business or
household
can decide on how much backup it needs.
Why invest in a generator? One of Griffith’s customers,a family with a home in Titusville high on a hill, loses powerregularlybecause of lightening strikes. The family’s children, says Griffith,become frightened when the lights go out. “When the lights goout, people’s minds play tricks. The generator makes them feelsecure.”In the case of this family, it also keeps the water running. Theyget water from a well, and a power failure means the well’s pump shutsdown.Water is an issue for another client, a doctor who lives in a floodzone. During a recent heavy rainfall, the doctor’s finished basementwas ruined when the power went out and the sump pump failed.For homeowners, the issues are safety and comfort. For smallbusinesses,whether they be at home or in an office park, the main issue oftenis money. An outage — or even a brown out — cuts off thecomputersthat are the lifeblood of nearly every business.Why a gas generator? The Coleman generators Griffith ispromoting run on natural gas. He says they are preferable for manycustomers — including families with children — because, unlikediesel-powered generators, they go on automatically, and do notrequireanyone to flip switches or pull ropes to get them going. Natural gas,Griffith adds, is a reliable source of fuel because power companiesmaintain their own back-up generators to keep gas flowing whenelectricpower is out. This is so, he claims, because if gas flow is shut off,pilots go out, and then when the gas goes on again, “you couldhave a lot of houses blowing up.”How much does it cost? Owners of homes and businessescan figure out how large a generator they need by adding up the ampson the electric devices they want to stay on all the time, even ina power outage. Amp ratings are affixed to most — if not all —electronic devices and appliances. “The average computer usestwo amps,” says Griffith. Copiers, because of the heat theygenerateas they print, use 6 to 12 amps, and a fax machine uses about twoamps. A refrigerator uses about 6 amps, and a freezer draws 12 amps.It is not necessary to power everything, though, says Griffith,pointingout that a freezer that remains closed will stay cold for a long time.A 10,000-watt generator is rated for 80 amps, a 15,000-watt generatoris rated for 120 amps, and a 25,000-watt generator is rated for 220amps. A ballpark price for the smallest unit is $6,500. The middleunit is about $11,000, and the largest unit would cost about $18,000.All prices include installation. Griffith says the 15,000 watt unitwould keep essential power in a 3,000 square foot house on. It wouldkeep the heat or air conditioning on, power the home office, and keepa good number of the lights on. With a 25,000 watt generator a homethat size — or larger — could run pretty much as usual, witheven the whirlpool on.For a business, the larger units would have no trouble powering 8to 10 computers, a copier and a fax machine, a server, and a numberof fluorescent lights.How does it work? The generator is linked to the home’smain power source. It turns itself on for a test run once every twoweeks, and presents a read-out indicating whether there are anyproblems.When power does go out, monitors alert the generator to take overand to keep running until the main power source is back up.There is a bump as this change-off occurs, and Griffith says it isimportant to have computers and other electronics protected by anuninterrupted power source for the transition. This plug-in device,he says, retails for about $400, and is easy to install.Griffith is gloomy about energy deregulation in New Jersey,predicting that the state might suffer through the sort of energycrisis that fouled up the works in California last year. Butregardlessof the success of deregulation, an easy prediction is that there willbe more lightening strikes, cars hitting utility poles, and freakwind storms like the one that took U.S. 1 down for more than 24 hourslast fall. It is up to each home owner and small business owner todecide whether preventing the ensuing disruption is worth the costof a generator.An-Mar Electrical Contractor, Box 2866, Trenton08690. Robert P. Griffith, proprietor. 609-587-3988; fax,609-584-7861.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
