Business Power Cut Calculator: Estimate Impact & Costs

Business Power Cut Calculator: Estimate Impact & Costs | UPS Systems

UPS Systems conducted research which revealed that nearly 1 in 4 business have neglected power continuity and 72% of businesses would be disrupted in the event of power related issues.

Due to the alarming results of this research, we have developed a simple tool which enables businesses, small and large, to calculate the impact that a power shortage could have on their financial performance.

As you many not have all these facts available, you can use these following guidelines and facts:

  • Gross Revenue (Gross) varies massively from business to business, so this many take a little research. You could also use this field for Gross Margin, if you work in this figure.
  • Number of Employees  refers to how many employees you having working in your business, this includes off site employees if they rely on anything on site, like a server or phone support.
  • The average wage (employee rate per hour) in 2017 per hour was £11.31 according to goverment figures. You could use this as a starting point or make a guesstimation of the averge hourly pay based on your inderstanding of your business.
  • The aveage working week is 37.5 hours over a 48 week period (once annual leave has been removed.) This makes the average number of hours per year (Year Hour) 1800. Obviously this would be different if your employee working shorter or longer hours as standard. 
  • Finally Number of hours of outage is how long you expect the powercut to last. If you need to calculate less than an hour you can use decimals.

Using the tool, it can be estimated that for businesses with over 250 employee and revenues higher than 10 million, a power cut could cost them at least £8.7k per hour. Even smaller business with up to 50 staff and revenues of 2.5 million could stand to lose around £1,989 per hour of downtime.

John Peers, CEO of UPS Systems says: “We’ve seen a great uptake of our products in recent years as more and more businesses realise the importance of protecting their systems and data. Though sadly, we still get the odd client who has suffered a great financial loss to their business as a result of not having protective systems in place – which is why it’s so important to us that we share this insight. The power cut costs calculator is an essential tool.”

The tool allows users to enter the number of staff, an approximate hourly wage, annual revenues and business operation hours. Then the calculator work out how much a power cut might cost the business by totalling the staff costs and the impact on total revenue over a chosen period of time. Using the tool, it can be estimated that a power cut could cost larger businesses with over 250 staff and revenues of over 10 million, at least £8.7k per hour.

With over a third of business saying they do not have any type of continuity plan or are unaware if one exists, this tool could set you on the path to saving your company thousands.

If your business would like to discuss power continuity, stand-by generators or Uninterruptible Power Supplies, don’t hesitate to contact a member of our engineering and sales team today. We supply UPS form all major manufacturers inluding Riello UPS, Eaton UPS, Vertiv UPS and APC UPS.