Buying vs Renting an Emergency Rental Generator

Nearly every business in the world needs power, and some more than others. From department stores to manufacturing plants, you rely on your power source to keep the lights on and your value generation steadily moving forward. Whether you’re serving customers, writing software, or running heaving machinery, when the power goes out your business will come to a full stop.  Fortunately, there’s no need to send everyone home and eat the productivity and business losses. It’s just a little power and all you need is a backup generator.

Even if you usually pull power from the city grid, having the ability to supply your business with its own power source in an emergency is incredibly useful and will allow you to keep your lights on even when others go down. In fact, there are several other reasons you may need an emergency generator. From here the question becomes whether or not you need to buy your own generator or if renting one is the right solution.

How Often You Need Backup Power

For most businesses, the power grid you are connected to will serve your needs most of the time. Full power outages are rare, usually caused by irregular and unusual circumstances. This means that your need for a backup generator will be equally rare, one or two times a year at most. Under these circumstances, renting a backup generator when the need strikes is much more practical than buying and maintaining one.

If, on the other hand, you are in a situation in which power outages are frequent and year-round, having your own backup generator will ensure that you can stay online even in the face of a constantly unreliable power supply.

How Much You Rely on Power

While almost every business is disrupted by a loss of power, the consequences of interruption vary. If you run a manufacturing plant in which processes are time-sensitive, having your own backup generator to come on at a moment’s notice may be vital to your facility. However, if your company is based in an office building or retail location and all you stand to lose are work hours, you have the luxury of waiting a few minutes for your rental generator to arrive while still saving yourself the potential hours of down-time that could be lost if you had no generator at all.

Maintenance and Repairs

Owning a backup generator requires you to keep it safe, maintained, and repair it if it breaks down. This means even after you pay the steep purchase price, you will still need to hire technicians periodically to service your generator unless you have these professionals on hand and available to do so. Rental generators, on the other hand, are maintained by the rental company and always come to you in pristine condition. If something goes wrong during your use of them, many rental companies will bring you another and take the original away for repairs.

Where You Need Power

If your company has multiple locations, any of them might need an emergency generator at one time or another and a single backup generator won’t be enough to ensure that all of them is supplied and what if more than one needs backup power at once? By having a go-to generator rental solution, you can rent from multiple locations and get as many generators as you need in the moment. Physical location is also important –  transporting a generator to remote areas can be problematic due to terrain and distance. If the location is too remote, having a backup already in place makes more sense.

What You Can Afford

Backup generators are expensive investments, especially for units large enough to supply an entire commercial or industrial facility. While this investment may be worthwhile if you constantly need backup power, in most cases, renting a generator is much more affordable, especially if you won’t need a backup generator more than a few hours once or twice a year.
Whether to buy your own generator or rent when the need arises is up to you. However, no matter what decision you make, it’s important to be informed. Know your power needs and the costs associated with owning the kind of generator you need versus the convenience of renting.

For fast, easy emergency rental generators and advice from our energy experts, contact us today!