Maintaining Power Quality in an Everchanging Retail Landscape

By: Tom Gornick, President of NXT Power

In the past 12 months, the retail industry had to evolve to adjust to how consumers changed their spending habits. One thing that had to stay consistent was how various retail peripherals are protected from power interruptions.  Some examples of said equipment are POS systems, I.T. equipment, surveillance cameras, security systems, and network communications. It is vital that these retail applications have power conditioners and backup power as these systems provide ultimate protection against power disruptions.  

“Retail equipment/application failure due to an underperforming or faulty power protection can derail the best plans for a strong return to the ‘business as usual’ norm. Keeping power as clean as possible is where protection begins,” explains Tom Gornick, CEO of NXT Power, manufacturer of advanced power quality solutions for retail applications.

Storefronts, both new and old, can also be affected from the effects of power disruptions. The use of elevators, HVAC units and even refrigerators within the building sends spikes throughout the internal power system causing damage to equipment within.  

Power quality issues can affect various aspects of your business, with a long list of destructive and costly effects. These disturbances are hidden and wreak havoc on your everyday necessary applications. Disturbances such power outages as well as high frequency noise contribute to “dirty” power. With dirty power, businesses can experience loss of sales, downtime, loss of data, inventory spoilage and more. Power line noise is one of the last problems you want to worry about when keeping your sensitive equipment online and operational “By preventing hardware damage and system interruptions, businesses can ensure maximum uptime and revenue generation,” Gornick adds.

Power quality solutions such as a power conditioner and a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) can help overall operations, minimize costs, and prevent downtime to those in the retail/restaurant industries. A transformer-based power conditioner and advanced UPS systems delivers clean and reliable power to your essential equipment every day. These systems also protect your electronic systems and ensure uninterrupted uptime all day, every day. When unprotected POS applications fail, you experience data loss, software lock ups and business downtime resulting in loss of revenue.  With protection in place, this results in increased profitability, customer satisfaction and employee productivity.

Many business owners ask what does a power conditioner or UPS system do for my POS system? A power conditioner filters out the high frequency noise and spikes that disrupt the operation of the POS system. It is similar to what a fuel filter does to protect the engine of a car. It removes the destructive elements that can cause early life failure.

The UPS system protects your system from going down when the power is down. A UPS Systems provide a bridge between the AC power system and the electrical grid (the power utility provider). If there is a break in the distribution system, the UPS is there to bridge that gap, so systems connected to the UPS do not come crashing down. The isolated UPS also provides a power conditioner engineered within the UPS, thus protecting from unforeseen power interruptions, and filtering our power disturbances.

The UPS system allows the equipment to be properly shutdown during extended power outages, defending against data loss, system interruption and hardware failure.

The final and most crucial reason is that power quality products like a power conditioner and UPS system saves time and money as they ensure uptime.

To avoid loss of productivity and revenue due to issues related to power quality, Gornick advises to seek the advice of power quality expert to evaluate your company’s current system and make sure it has the proper Power Quality products in place to guarantee uptime for all your company’s processes. 

If you would like to learn more about maintaining power quality, please visit us nxtpower.com or call [877] NXT-POWR [7697].