Clean Power, Safe Buildings: Managing Power Quality and Transfer Dynamics

Many building outages aren’t caused by a total loss of power but by poor power quality or poorly timed transfers that trip equipment, corrupt controllers, or disable access systems. In this episode Alex Morgan sits down with Michael Harrington to unpack the hidden gaps between electrical design and operational reality: harmonics from modern loads, undersized UPS systems, automatic transfer switch timing, and the tradeoffs between centralized and distributed resiliency. We focus on operationally realistic solutions owners and facilities teams can adopt without vendor hype: detection and monitoring strategies, testing and transfer rehearsals, pragmatic redundancy patterns, and maintenance practices that reduce surprise downtime. Listeners will come away with concrete questions to ask during design and commissioning, simple tests to run duringhandover, and a checklist for turning power strategy into measurable uptime for tenants.