Outage Cost Calculator for Business

Estimate the real cost of a power outage from lost sales, staff idle time, backup energy, spoilage, payment downtime, and recovery work.

Business downtime Exportable report Updated 2026

Outage inputs

Use actual shop, clinic, office, or production figures. Presets only adjust checklist guidance, not your numbers.

Total hours without usable grid power.
Wages and paid contractor time that cannot be redeployed.
Fuel, generator rental, battery hire, maintenance, or inverter runtime cost.
Value at risk from cold chain, ingredients, stock, lab samples, or damaged production.
POS failure, router downtime, missed delivery orders, call center loss, or manual reconciliation.
Extra cost for restart, cleaning, queue backlog, overtime, and customer recovery.
Dated assumptions and sensitivity controls
Some sales may shift later. Use 100% when sales are perishable or walk-in dependent.
How much of normal operation your backup can keep running.
Generator, inverter, battery, solar, Starlink, POS backup, or cold storage upgrade.

Estimated outage impact

Total outage cost-Full incident estimate
Lost revenue-Adjusted for recoverable sales
Backup running cost-Generator or backup energy
Staff idle cost-Paid idle time
Spoilage and payment risk-Inventory plus digital downtime
Break-even backup budget-Monthly loss avoided
Cost laneMethodResult
Revenue lossRevenue per hour x outage hours x lost percent x uncovered operations-
Backup costBackup cost per hour x outage hours-
Operational riskSpoilage exposure plus internet or payment downtime-
Recovery bufferSubtotal x recovery buffer percent-
Monthly exposureTotal incident cost x similar outages per month-
Run a calculation to see the backup recommendation.

Operating checklist

    Next action plan

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      Country outage pages

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      For utilities, estates, and business publishers

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