No-power planning for businesses
Prepare your business for power outages.
Make sure your business is prepared for an electricity outage, whether it’s a planned or unplanned one.
Check your terms and conditions with your electricity retailer – it will detail notification periods for planned electricity network outages and any compensation clauses. Consider checking with your insurance provider – How long does power need to be off before the policy covers you?
Please note: MainPower does not supply businesses with generators for planned or unplanned outages. To ensure continuity, it is the responsibility of the business to have a no-power plan in place. Please speak to your electrician for more information on hiring a generator for an outage.
We’re here to help. Get in touch if you need help. Or, check out our FAQs.
Communication
- Have a good backup plan, and make sure your staff know what to do if there’s a power outage.
- Keep a transistor radio handy, and store it with spare batteries.
- Keep mobile phones charged, and have a fully charged battery pack for device charging.
Business functionality
- Consider the use of manual EFTPOS and credit card options.
- Can your site be supplied by a generator? Know your capacity requirements, connection options, and generator hire contact details.
- If you have electric gates or doors into your place of work, make sure you know how to manually override the system.
- Have a plan for working in alternative work locations and for diverting calls to mobile phones. Know which equipment needs to be reset after a power outage.
Water, heat, and lighting
- If your business is based in a rural area, when the power is off, your water pump might not work. Be prepared by storing emergency water supplies for drinking.
- If you don’t have access to water in a power outage, keep a bottle of sanitiser handy for bathroom and food handling needs.
- Keep extra blankets and jumpers handy in case you are left without a heat source during a cold time of year.
- Be prepared with battery-operated lighting (where applicable).
Protection
- Consider using surge protection to protect all appliances within your business from power interruption.
- If you have a business alarm, check with your commercial alarm provider to make sure you have a backup battery supply during an outage.
- As part of your Health and Safety programme, you should already have a first aid kit handy along with your accident and incident book.
- Consider if you need a generator. Ask a local registered electrician for advice if you are not sure what size generator you need.
Outage fact sheets
Here are some useful fact sheets and information for planning for an outage.
This fact sheet is designed to inform you about using generators
safely in the event of a power outage.
Download our checklist for hints and tips to create a no-power plan for your business.
We’re here to help
If you need some assistance or advice, please get in touch with our team.