On Sun, 16 September 2001, kevin pop account wrote:
Before someone asks we have a very steady national supply over here so running the gens is purely a commerical aim.I would have thought that even stateside this would make sense no ?
The US has fairly strict air quality control laws. It is relatively expensive to operate a desiel generator more than 100-200 hours a year in a major urban area due to the permits and environmental pollution control requirements. In most cases, it is less expensive to use utility power in the USA, and generators only for backup. With the California power situation, several people have done a lot of research on the trade-offs between utility and backup power. The result is, except for disasters, most backup generators are not regularly operated for extended periods. Before their budget was cut, the Department of Energy had a great Backup Power Working Group. You can read the results of their work at http://www.dp.doe.gov/CTG/bpwg/bpwg.htm You should remember that generators are mechanical devices. Wear and tear during extended run-times *WILL* result in breakdowns. The longer your operate the generators, the more failures you will experience. Its always a trade-off between how long you test mechanical equipment. Based on DOE studies, many people actually over-test their backup generators. Standard Bell telephone CO design doesn't assume extended disasters. Some colocation facility designers have designed their generator plants differently than normal Bell practice. But even colocation facility operations need to set some limits to their design conditions. Locations with power problems 25 Broadway 32 Old Slip ATT Local Service (WTC basement) Sprint/Sprint PCS (location unknown) Locations destroyed Verizon/Genuity WTC Until I know what happened, and read the final report, I can't say if any particular design could have performed any better.