Critical Power Industry Forms New Coalition

Critical Power Industry Forms New Coalition

Aug 04 - Business Wire

Representatives of the critical power industry today announced the formation of the Critical Power Coalition (CPC), a national organization whose mission is to develop common public policy and establish a unified industry voice to ensure the quality, reliability, and continuity of electrical power within critical industries, businesses and public services.

The CPC, comprised of representatives from leading vendors and end users of critical power products and services, brings together industry leaders to focus on urgent policy, technology and regulatory issues at the forefront of today's electrical society. The CPC's founding members include representatives from American Power Conversion, Caterpillar, Cummins, Digital Power Group, Eaton Corporation and its Powerware Division, Emcor, EnerSys, EYP Mission Critical Facilities, Liebert/Emerson, MGE UPS Systems, Siemens, SquareD and Tishman Technologies.

"Nearly every significant facet of the nation's banking, communications, safety and vital infrastructures relies on electric power to operate. Meanwhile, increasing power demand is compromising the power grid's ability to supply clean, uninterrupted power," said Mark A. Ascolese, Co-Chairman, Critical Power Coalition. "While government and public utility companies continue to work on strengthening and improving the grid, companies and government organizations are tasked with designing and managing critical power in their own operations - inside their facilities - and will ultimately need to develop systems and plans to sustain critical operations when the utility grid is unable to provide clean, uninterrupted power."

Formal announcement of the CPC falls one year after the August 14, 2003, blackouts that plagued the Northeastern United States and follows the recent release of the 9/11 Commission Report that details the investigation of private sector preparedness post 9/11 attacks. With respect to electric power, the CPC agrees with the 9/11 Commission that the private sector and the majority of the public sector are not prepared and that secure electric power is a vital component of overall security preparedness.

Grid-based power is often unable to meet the demands associated with the day-to-day operation of critical applications, and it also cannot provide continuity and security of operations in either the public or private sector. From common power disturbances or brief outages inherent in a public grid, to less common, but debilitating extended outages - critical businesses and public services face the prospect of hours to even days or weeks of power outages. The only way to ensure an uninterrupted supply of both continuous, and "clean" power to mission-critical operations is for companies and government organizations to take action within their facilities. Supporting operational continuity and high "power security" is the mission of the critical power industry.

"Power security must be based on the reality that the public grid will not be available when it is most needed - in time of crisis, whether from natural disasters or acts of terrorism," said Mark P. Mills, Co-Chairman, Critical Power Coalition. "In the post 9/11 world, both the private and public sectors should plan and equip for events that can impact the availability of electric power for critical services and operations."

The Critical Power Coalition's preliminary initiatives include:

-- Building a new and unique presence in Washington D.C. to support activities now underway in regulatory, financial and legislative arenas.

-- Raising awareness for the importance of critical power at the point-of-use, on the customer side of the meter, from traditional markets (data and telecom) to non-traditional markets (water and E-911).

-- Promoting best-practice sharing in critical power management.

-- Differentiating the needs of the critical power industry from those of the grid power industry.

For more information on the Critical Power Coalition, visit www.criticalpowercoalition.org. A white paper, entitled "Critical Power," is also available that discusses protection of electric power infrastructures in today's modern society and addresses key ulnerabilities and considerations for securing critical power. The paper focuses on grid outage risks, power demands of a digital economy, establishing standards, resilient power, as well as information on public and private sectors taking a distributed approach to securing their own particularized critical power requirements. To download copies of the above-mentioned white paper visit www.criticalpowercoalition.org .

For far more extensive news on the energy/power visit: http://www.energycentral.com .