Many customers learn lesson, invest in backup generators

In a press release, ComEd described the Aug. 23 event "as the first devastating storm of the 21st century in the Chicagoland area."

"It was a military operation to get those customers restored," said Mike McMahon, ComEd vice president of engineering.

But it doesn't take a storm of historic proportions to disrupt power. A typical hard downpour knocks out 90,000 ComEd users.

Since last August, some suppliers of permanent home backup generators -- priced at $8,000 to $20,000 -- have seen a dramatic increase in sales. At Steiner Electric Co., located in Elk Grove Village, 327 were sold after the August Blast, compared to 99 from January to July.

"Residential sales are very weather-related, but in storms like last August our sales have tripled," said David Easler, senior vice president at Steiner.

Still, he expressed confidence in ComEd's reliability.

"We have a lot more reliable power than most parts of the Midwest, but we're not immune to what can happen when bad weather comes," he said.

Ken Stevens, owner of Breakwater Electric in Alsip, also said more homeowners are investing in permanent generators.

"Over time, it's not a lot of money to install a generator, when faced with emptying a food freezer several times during outages," he said.

At large retail stores, purchases of portable generators were storm-driven, said Jen King, a Home Depot spokesman in Atlanta, citing the June 7 tornado that destroyed homes in south suburban University Park.

"We do see a spike for portable sales during storms, but we have not seen a trend in buying and selling more in the Midwest or northern Illinois," she said.

For critical emergency services and operations, such as hospitals, computer-reliant offices and fire and police stations, the need for backup electricity is evident and in some cases necessary under the law.

"Events like hurricanes Katrina and Wilma showed many firms just how catastrophic a loss of power can be. For example, grocery stores lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in spoiled food because they lacked generators to keep their refrigeration systems running," said Jalane Kellough, executive director of Electrical Generating Systems Association, Boca Raton, Fla.

"Over the past few years, businesses such as manufacturing plants, data centers, hospitals, gas stations, apartment buildings, hotels and computer server farms have increasingly used emergency backup generators to ensure their operations suffer from as little downtime as possible," she said.

Since 2003, the city of Chicago has required backup systems in buildings over eight stories. Regulations vary in the suburbs.

"Every suburb sets its own rules and laws, where it's less likely you will see backup generators in office buildings, but many hospitals require them," said Patricia Schwarze, suburban executive director of the Building Owners and Managers Association in Schaumburg.

About 12 years ago, Schaumburg Village Hall was connected to an automatic switchover power grid owned by ComEd that operates in emergencies, said Village Manager Ken Fritz. Also, Schaumburg's Public Works and Police and Fire departments have emergency generators.

"We didn't do this because of too many blackouts. There aren't many, but rather if a cable was accidentally cut, similar to the way hospitals have emergency hookups," he said.

Though utility companies are responsible for delivering reliable power, hospitals are expected to be ready with very reliable emergency systems for patient care.

Institutions such as Northwestern University in Evanston use fallback systems for student housing and administration, but also for research departments.

Medical facilities fall under "the recognized doctrine of force majeure" -- meaning a major force of weather or an act of God, said David Overbye, dean of university administration for DeVry University, in Oakbrook Terrace.

"Thus, if you are in a hospital in New Orleans performing open heart surgery during a hurricane, you will not be able to lay all liability for a power outage on the utility," said Overbye, who worked for the power industry before coming to DeVry.

"The courts will expect you to take additional steps -- backup generators, redundant systems and so on. As we saw with Katrina, many of these proved to be inadequate. So reliability is a shared responsibility in critical systems," he said.