Keeping a Meadowbrook Lake office park online during the ice storm
During the 2007 ice storm, our crew rolled into the office parks near Meadowbrook Lake and found the problem fast: frozen service gear, sagging lines, and a building load that kept climbing as the temperature stayed pinned below freezing. Ice kept popping off the rack in chunks, and the main concern wasn’t comfort — it was keeping servers, lighting, and tenant operations from collapsing into a shutdown. In Novi’s older 1950s-to-1980s commercial buildings, we’ve learned the electrical rooms don’t always give you much room to work, so every move had to count.
We set up an N+1 redundant generator rental package, then staggered the units so one set could carry the load while the backup stayed ready if demand spiked or a unit needed attention. Our EGSA-certified technicians handled the transfer gear, checked phase balance, and watched the fuel system as the ice kept building outside. We stayed on the site, listened for any change in the load, and kept the redundancy margin in place until utility power came back stable. The client kept business moving, and their tenants never had to sit in the dark.
We stayed open through the storm, and that backup unit kept us breathing when the grid didn’t.
Operations Manager, Meadowbrook Lake Office Park
