Keeping the Lights On: The Importance of Regular Electrical System Maintenance

You’re in the elevator with the CEO when the power goes out. Again.

That awkward silence? That’s your budget approval meeting next quarter — because while you’re explaining why the server room is now a very expensive sauna, your counterpart at the building across town is getting promoted for “exceptional operational excellence.”

Here’s the thing about electrical system maintenance: It’s invisible when it works and career ending when it doesn’t. Your board doesn’t care about preventive schedules until CNN is filming OSHA investigators outside your building or when that “minor electrical issue” shuts down production for three days straight.

With updated NFPA 70B standards now carrying absolute legal liability, plus utility costs climbing faster than your stress levels, every unplanned outage feels more expensive than the last. Yet some facilities teams have cracked the code by building electrical system maintenance programs that nip disasters in the bud instead of just documenting them afterward.

Consider the following:

The Real Price Tag of ‘We’ll Deal With It Later’

What does electrical neglect actually cost when the chickens come home to roost? 

Well, for one, that hourlong outage you’re hoping never happens averages $25,000 — and if you’re running a large facility, we’re talking $500,000+ when everything goes sideways. Meanwhile, electrical malfunctions sparked over 7,400 commercial fires in 2023 alone, torching $354 million in property. That’s roughly $48,000 per incident, not counting the months of operational headaches afterward.

But here’s where it gets really ugly: Arc-flash incidents happen five to 10 times daily across the country. We’re talking 2,000+ people in burn centers annually and around 400 deaths. When litigation hits, settlements routinely top $10 million to $15 million. Your insurance carrier is absolutely tracking these numbers, and OSHA’s gotten creative about citing NFPA standards under “general duty” violations — with electrical injury settlements averaging over $1 million.

The kicker? Forty percent of facility managers are still running equipment until it fails despite watching these costs climb yearly.  

The Rules Changed While You Weren’t Looking

Good news and bad news time. The bad news? Regulators finally woke up and decided electrical system maintenance can’t stay optional forever. The good news? Following the new rules saves money and covers your legal backside. Win-win, assuming you can navigate the alphabet soup of updated codes without losing your mind.

• NFPA 70B Just Got Teeth (January 2023): Facilities now “shall” implement an electrical maintenance program — that’s lawyer speak for “this isn’t a suggestion anymore.” You need legible single-line diagrams and documented test intervals, meaning a hand-drawn schematic from 1987 taped to the electrical room wall won’t cut it.

• The Supporting Cast of Compliance: NFPA 70E handles arc-flash PPE and labeling requirements, while the 2024 NFPA 99 update pushes healthcare and critical facilities toward full EMPs. Healthcare facilities can’t play fast and loose with electrical systems when people’s lives depend on backup power.

• Infrared Thermography: Thermal imaging catches overheating connections before they become expensive problems. One substation avoided a $2 million failure by spotting a loose connection running 40 degrees hotter than usual — all for the cost of a routine thermal scan.

• Load Studies and Power Quality Monitoring: Harmonics silently kill variable frequency drives and transformers. However, power quality logging catches these invisible gremlins before they trash your equipment. Think of it as a cardiac monitor for your electrical system.

• Arc-Flash Assessments: Update your arc-flash labels every five years or after any system changes. Documented EMPs can slash workers’ comp premiums by 15% and speed up claims processing when something goes wrong.

Building a Data-Driven Maintenance Playbook 

Compliance gets you legal cover, but smart data keeps your phone from ringing at 2 a.m. The facilities teams that sleep well at night have figured out how to spot problems before they become three-alarm fires — literally. Here’s how you can do the same.  

1. Start With What Matters Most: Asset Criticality Rankings

Rank every panel, switchgear unit, UPS, and generator by three factors: safety impact, production loss potential, and replacement lead time. Your main distribution panel feeding the server room gets different attention than the lighting circuit for the break room. Create a simple A/B/C ranking system and watch maintenance dollars suddenly make sense to accounting.

2. Blend Preventive and Predictive Like a Pro

The predictive maintenance market is exploding toward $18.5 billion by 2028, and early adopters report 30% lower maintenance spending with 70% fewer breakdowns. Yet here’s the disconnect: MaintainX’s 2024 survey found that 65% of maintenance pros know proactive work beats reactive firefighting, but 57% still spend less than half their time on it. Smart facilities teams are flipping that ratio and watching their budgets stretch further.

3. Grab the Low-Hanging Fruit First

Quarterly infrared scans take 15 minutes per panel but routinely catch loose connections running 40 degrees hotter than normal — that’s a fire waiting to happen. Ultrasonic inspections spot failing breakers before they start nuisance tripping and driving everyone crazy. Smart meters paired with basic analytics cut 12-18% off annual maintenance costs by catching energy waste and equipment degradation early.

4. Prove Value With Real Numbers

Hospital systems excel at ROI documentation because lives depend on reliable power. One facility integrated preventive electrical maintenance across its campus and documented a 25% drop in energy consumption within the first year. Concrete numbers like these turn skeptical CFOs into maintenance program champions faster than any theoretical presentation.

5. Close the Skills Gap While You Scale

Certified thermographers and NFPA 70B-trained technicians pay for themselves quickly, but good people are hard to find. Meanwhile, digitizing EMP tasks in a CMMS creates the traceability that auditors love and helps new team members get up to speed faster. The combination of trained people and smart systems beats either approach alone.

Stop Playing Electrical Russian Roulette

Electrical failures used to be random bad luck. Now, they’re predictable and with predictable price tags. Downtime costs $25,000 per hour, electrical fires burned through hundreds of millions in property last year, and NFPA 70B made your maintenance decisions legally binding. Top facilities teams already built data-driven maintenance programs that catch problems before they explode into headlines. Everyone else is still crossing their fingers and hoping their aging infrastructure holds together through another quarter. The gap between these two groups is widening fast, and the consequences of falling behind keep getting more expensive.

BrandPoint Services gets the multilocation electrical maintenance nightmare you’re managing every day. Finding qualified electrical contractors who show up, maintaining consistent service quality across dozens of sites, and keeping everyone compliant with evolving codes while controlling costs is enough to drive anyone to early retirement. But our national network of prequalified contractors handles everything from routine panel inspections to emergency repairs, backed by dedicated account teams who always answer their phones. Whether you’re running retail chains, convenience stores, healthcare facilities, restaurants, or something else, we build preventative maintenance programs that catch problems before they cascade into six-figure disasters. And it’s all because we put our clients first.

Ready to sleep better at night? Connect with BrandPoint Services to keep your facilities powered, compliant, and future ready.