On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 3:20 PM Fred Baker <fredbaker.ietf@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sep 10, 2021, at 1:33 PM, Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net> wrote:
The utility let them know that they were going to be doing some maintenance work in the area. No impact expected, but out of an abundance of caution, they transfer over to generators. After the utility lets them know that the maintenance work is all finished, they want to switch back. If the generators are "emergency power", and you need to switch back to "utility power", obviously the way to do this must be the big red button, clearly marked as "EMERGENCY POWER OFF", no?!
One of the many stories that came out of 9/11 was a switching center in NY City that had a diesel generator as a power backup - which of course acted as primary when the city power is off. After a few days of operation, it needed to be refueled, so a truck was sent in carrying gasoline. The generator was refueled and restarted, and - oops - diesel != gasoline. So then they needed to bring in a new generator.
Oooof. I've seen someone at a gas station do something similar -- I cannot remember if it was putting diesel in their gasoline car, or gas in their diesel pickup, but I *do* remember the sudden yelp and look of dismay when they suddenly realized what they were doing. It must be really easy to get wrong in a car (operating on autopilot), but that's a much less bad failure than a generator... Anyway, refueling generators reminds me of: https://www.mail-archive.com/nanog@nanog.org/msg111947.html W
Yup, it happens, and it happened.
-- The computing scientist’s main challenge is not to get confused by the complexities of his own making. -- E. W. Dijkstra