Planning a new business location to stay open through an outage

Start with what would close the doors

Every business has a short list of failures that stop sales outright: card terminals in a store, refrigeration in a restaurant, the network in an office, medication refrigerators in a clinic or pharmacy. We ask owners for that list at the first walkthrough, because it decides which circuits, conduits and drain routes go into the drawings.

The timing matters more than the equipment. An inlet box, an empty conduit to the roof or a drain pan costs little while the trades are on site; after the ceiling is finished, the same items mean demolition, patching and usually a day of closure.

A second internet connection on a different path

Relying on one internet provider is the most common single point of failure we see in a new fit-out, and a second connection is inexpensive insurance. The mistake is choosing two services that fail together: a fiber service and a cable service on the same pole line arrive by the same route, and one fallen tree takes both down.

The second connection should travel a different physical path: fixed wireless, a microwave link or cellular broadband. Fixed wireless and microwave need a roof or facade mount with line of sight and the landlord's permission; cellular needs a signal test where the equipment will actually sit. Any link can fail in a regional outage, but two different kinds rarely fail for the same reason.

During construction we run a separate conduit for the second service, put the provider equipment on the backed-up circuit and terminate both links on a dual-WAN firewall. The service entrance guide covers the pathway for the wired provider.

A generator or battery inlet with an interlock

For businesses that cannot afford to close, we recommend and build a simple alternate power inlet: a weatherproof inlet box wired to the main panel or a critical-load subpanel, with a listed interlock kit or a transfer switch. The subpanel carries only the circuits on the owner's list, so a modest portable source can run them.

During widespread outages such as Hurricane Sandy, this detail has kept our clients open and powered for days without the grid, running on portable battery packs and in some cases a vehicle, while neighboring businesses waited for utility power. Our EV backup power guide explains which vehicles can export power.

A backup source may connect to the building only through a listed inlet and interlock or a transfer switch. NEC Article 702, which covers optional standby systems, requires transfer equipment that keeps the normal and alternate sources from being connected to each other. Without it, a generator or battery can back-feed the utility lines through the transformer and energize wires that line workers are repairing on the assumption that they are dead.

In New York City, the NYC Health Department's generator guidance for businesses (opens an external site) notes that connections preparing a building for a portable generator require a permit, and electrical work (opens an external site) must be performed by DOB-licensed electrical contractors. Our licensed partner electricians install the inlet, interlock and subpanel under an electrical permit and close it out with inspection. On Long Island, the town or village building department sets the permit path.

• Fuel: the same NYC Health guidance states that storing more than 2.5 gallons of gasoline for small portable generators requires an FDNY flammable and combustible liquids permit. Fuel-burning generators belong outdoors, well away from doors, windows and air intakes.
• Lithium-ion batteries: we recommend portable power stations listed by a nationally recognized testing laboratory to UL 2743, the safety standard for portable power packs. The FDNY advises that the safest place to charge and store lithium-ion batteries (opens an external site) is outside, where possible, and permanently installed battery systems fall under separate DOB and FDNY energy storage rules. Confirm the requirements for the specific product and storage location before buying.

Using the same inlet to lower summer demand charges

Commercial electricity in New York City is expensive in summer peak hours. Many business accounts pay a demand charge based on the highest demand recorded in the billing period. On the time-of-use rates Con Edison publishes (opens an external site), the small-business peak runs weekdays from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and is priced highest from June through September, and the large-business rate bills demand separately for several windows. Check your rate on your bill.

Some of our customers use the inlet for a second purpose. During the highest-cost hours they move a large load, such as a walk-in cooler, onto portable battery packs and recharge them off-peak, which lowers the peak they are billed for. Because the demand charge is set by the highest interval in the window, the battery must carry the load through the entire peak period; a pack that runs out at 4 p.m. leaves the full peak on the bill. The demand charge guide explains the calculation. When customers say the batteries paid for themselves, they count three returns together.

• Lower demand and peak-hour charges on the electric bill.
• Revenue that is not lost when the business stays open through an outage.
• The tax treatment of the battery as business equipment, which may qualify for the section 179 deduction or the special depreciation allowance described in IRS Publication 946 (opens an external site). We are contractors, not tax advisors; consult a CPA such as Copper River Tax (copperrivertax.com), which has worked with many of our clients on tax-saving strategies for their projects.

Combined, these have paid back the batteries quickly for many of the businesses we work with. That is our experience, not a promise; the result depends on the tariff, the load, how often outages occur and the business's tax situation.

Cooling and water failures

Condensate and refrigerant lines leak eventually, and where they run decides whether a leak is a service call or a closure. We route them away from electrical panels, the network closet, stock rooms and the ceiling over the sales floor. Air handlers above a ceiling get a secondary drain pan with a float switch that shuts the unit off before the pan overflows, and leak sensors, with an automatic water shutoff where it fits, go where a failure would do the most damage.

Everything stays serviceable, with access panels at every fan coil, trap and valve and isolation valves so one unit can be shut off alone. Where losing cooling would close the business, as in a server room, a pharmacy or a restaurant kitchen, two smaller units in place of one keep part of the space conditioned during a repair, the approach our clinic backup power guide applies to medication refrigerators.

Failure points we plan for during construction