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Backup power
Backup power is UPS, inverter, or generator capacity that keeps the seat alive through a brownout long enough to fail over or shut down cleanly.
How it works
A 600VA UPS that dies in four minutes is a gesture. Size for modem plus laptop plus one monitor for 20-30 minutes, plus a plan for longer outages. Typhoon week is the exam. For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.
Example: outage 40 minutes, UPS holds 25, LTE modem stays up, ticket SLA holds. No UPS: dead queue, angry morning.
How it differs
Brownout is the event. Local DU outage is the utility. Typhoon day protocol is the weather plan.
Common errors
Requiring a diesel generator for a ₱30,000 seat.
In practice
Treat Backup power as a week-one operating object. Ask for a desk shot, a power plan, and a second network path. Geography is not personality. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have backup power yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.