Dirty Power, Safe Buildings: How Power Quality Silently Drives Failures

Power quality problems—voltage sags, harmonics, transients, and grounding issues—don’t make headlines, but they shorten equipment life, trigger false alarms, and cause sporadic outages that frustrate tenants and operators. In this episode Alex Morgan interviews Michael Harrington to translate electrical nuance into operational decisions for property teams. We define the everyday signs of ‘dirty power,’ walk through common root causes (from shared tenant loads to aging UPS systems), and weigh the tradeoffs between fixes: better monitoring, selective conditioning, UPS sizing, and distributed resiliency like critical-load microgrids. Michael shares concise, real-world examples of incidents that looked like network or software failures but traced back to power quality. Listeners will get a prioritized, practical checklist they can use during capital planning, vendor conversations, and post‑incident reviews—without requiring deep electrical design work. Ideal for facilities leaders, IT/OT managers, and owners who need to reduce unexpected downtime and extend asset life.