Page 15 - OPE July 2019

More and more
people are
seeing the light
Temporary power is increasingly top of mind for consumers and businesses which are disadvantaged when the world goes dark on them. So – what’s hot and generating interest this year? Steve Bohling reports.
both chainsaws and generators.
June this year brought yet more wind-
driven power outages in the North Island and July saw winter really setting in with the South Island suffering in particular.
Power companies offer little real advice to homeowners beyond having a back-up powerbank or small battery pack to charge your smartphone (so you can be informed of how much longer you’ll be reading by candle light).
Businesses may however consider installing a generator to ensure “essential services” (basically the means of egress) remain operational.
Luckily, end users of all scales have been working it out for themselves that being able to generate their own power, for major or minor applications, temporarily or for more extended periods, is useful to have.
The same but more of it
To some extent, what we were hearing last year still applies but in 2019 it seems we’re looking at more of the same.
This June at Fieldays, John Lahman at BE Pressure saw two quite different market segments with a lot of interest in smaller inverter generators from “a
mixture of people including people that were motorhoming and caravanning, horse trucks and people who are living off grid.”
The second biggest area of enquiry John and his team fielded at Mystery Creek this year was from lifestyle blockers, farmers, customers wanting a bigger generator for back-up power.
“They were sick of the power going out and having to rush around trying to get things powered up. They were looking for preventative maintenance I suppose you could say, something that they could have in place before the storm.”
This time last year we found both
lifestyle domestic and “power” end users increasingly looking ahead and planning for power outages. Has BE Pressure experienced more of the same in the last 12 months?
Says John Lahman of his Fieldays visitors: “We got a positive feeling that people were planning ahead a little bit more [and] it was good to see that people were basically thinking about the problem before it actually happens.
“That was really evident with a lot of people looking at back-up power. We did a trade show in the South Island last week and all the bigger generators we sold that week
THIS TIME LAST year, we were talking about April’s storms and the wide-ranging, extended power
outages that ensued.
We were also talking about a growing
group of consumers who wanted to be prepared for the next power outage.
And not just lifestyle blockers either, but also townies, desperate to keep the contents
of their fridges from going bad and their heat pumps from ceasing to blow.
We were also talking about the increasing numbers of commercial and agricultural end users who were set up to keep their businesses rolling with full standby generation.
If there was a silver lining it’s that the outdoor power sector was there to help with
MARKETPLACE
Generators & Pressure Cleaners
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