WEATHER: rolling blackouts along the East Coast
Due to the heat, high electric use, and the loss of some generators some east coast power companies are into their reserve limits, which means a loss of a generation plant will cause an indefinite blackhout. Several utilities have started some rolling black outs in their service regions, voluntary and mandatory load dumping and voltage reductions. Each 'planned' rolling black out is expected to last less than 20 minutes, but the electric companies are warning customers service may be interrupted up to four hours. The heat is supposed to break this afternoon/evening. However the front will bring a line of strong thunderstorms through the east coast, which creates its own problems. All of our east coast POPs have stayed up, so far. But several of our customers have experienced power outages at their sites and some libraries have closed for the day. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation
At 04:59 PM 7/6/99 -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
The heat is supposed to break this afternoon/evening. However the front will bring a line of strong thunderstorms through the east coast, which creates its own problems.
Right -- we should be back down to a cool 95 F degrees tomorrow. :-) We saw 104 degrees here today, with about 80% humidity. We are experiencing some thunder & lightening at the moment, due to the extreme heat conditions. - paul (Fairfax VA)
Let's not forget that a/c units in data centers, NOC's, and customer service call centers have been running 24x7 as the night time temperatures have not dropped below 80 in many cities on the east cost for days (it's over 90 in DC at 1:00am). Units in commercial office buildings have shut down, and repair times are not good. The consequences of a failure are more obvious than the solutions for those running off of building a/c units and/or smaller individual a/c systems. Greg U On Tue, 6 Jul 1999, Sean Donelan wrote:
Due to the heat, high electric use, and the loss of some generators some east coast power companies are into their reserve limits, which means a loss of a generation plant will cause an indefinite blackhout. Several utilities have started some rolling black outs in their service regions, voluntary and mandatory load dumping and voltage reductions. Each 'planned' rolling black out is expected to last less than 20 minutes, but the electric companies are warning customers service may be interrupted up to four hours.
The heat is supposed to break this afternoon/evening. However the front will bring a line of strong thunderstorms through the east coast, which creates its own problems.
All of our east coast POPs have stayed up, so far. But several of our customers have experienced power outages at their sites and some libraries have closed for the day. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation
Hot Diggety! On a bright and sunny day, Gregory Urban was rumored to have said..
Let's not forget that a/c units in data centers, NOC's, and customer service call centers have been running 24x7 as the night time temperatures have not dropped below 80 in many cities on the east cost for days (it's over 90 in DC at 1:00am). Units in commercial office buildings have shut down, and repair times are not good. The consequences of a failure are more obvious than the solutions for those running off of building a/c units and/or smaller individual a/c systems.
Hmm. Those folks might be better served by studying data center environments in the South or Southwest - ie Phoenix, Dallas, etc. Those folks generally don't seem to be unduly alarmed by operational impact since they've planned for it one way or another from day one, AFAIK. As a side note, I got hit by brief blackouts in my building that affected equipment not in the computer room (ie workstations; computer room on an industrial strength UPS - and I don't mean APS units :) ) yesterday - not sure, but suspect had to do with the rolling blackouts(?). As for the air conditioning units...good point. -Dan
In message <199907070527.BAA05002@frontiernet.net>, Dan Foster writes:
Hot Diggety! On a bright and sunny day, Gregory Urban was rumored to have said ..
Let's not forget that a/c units in data centers, NOC's, and customer service call centers have been running 24x7 as the night time temperatures have not dropped below 80 in many cities on the east cost for days (it's over 90 in DC at 1:00am). Units in commercial office buildings have shut down, and repair times are not good. The consequences of a failure are more obvious than the solutions for those running off of building a/c units and/or smaller individual a/c systems.
Hmm. Those folks might be better served by studying data center environments in the South or Southwest - ie Phoenix, Dallas, etc. Those folks generally don't seem to be unduly alarmed by operational impact since they've planned for it one way or another from day one, AFAIK.
Tell me about it. You have to significantly overrate your cooling plant to handing 3 months of continous operation a year. And you might be suprised when your high R value insulation traps your waste heat, and of course its 110F outside, can't really open the windows. UPSs are a problem too. Batteries tend to get hot when they are discharged to rapidly, and don't work nearly as well when the room temperature is over 100 F. Of course we don't really have building that don't have central AC. And bad things happen when the temperature compensators go out on those 48v battery bank/regulators that are sitting in a parking structure at 3pm when its 100F+. I seem to recall a CO fire caused by overheated batteries from the risks digests. Frankly if people would just dig a big hole in the ground, bury all the computer equipment in it, with the large thermal mass, you could keep it at a nice 68F all year round. Maybe its just Texas, but I can't recall ever having a power outage due to lack of capacity in the summer. Although I've see heating systems fail in the winter, when it gets unusally cold and the natural gas pipelines give up. --- jerry@fc.net Freeside/ Insync Internet, Inc.| 512-458-9810 | http://www.fc.net #include <sys/machine/wit/fortune.h>
On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, Jeremy Porter wrote:
Frankly if people would just dig a big hole in the ground, bury all the computer equipment in it, with the large thermal mass, you could keep it at a nice 68F all year round.
That is a joke right? With data center heat calculations going up, that is hardly a major difference.
Maybe its just Texas, but I can't recall ever having a power outage due to lack of capacity in the summer. Although I've see heating systems fail in the winter, when it gets unusally cold and the natural gas pipelines give up.
Wow, I find that hard to beleave. I have lived in many areas of the world and they all have problems with the summer load, just as many gas companies do with the winter load. The utilities including telephone don't engineer their networks for the highest possible load, they try to get as close as they can. Telephone networks have blocking probabilities, power networks have load factors, etc. -- Check out the new CLEC mailing list at http://www.robotics.net/clec
<> Nathan Stratton Telecom & ISP Consulting http://www.robotics.net nathan@robotics.net
--- jerry@fc.net Freeside/ Insync Internet, Inc.| 512-458-9810 | http://www.fc.net #include <sys/machine/wit/fortune.h>
Unnamed Administration sources reported that Nathan Stratton said: [peak shortages]
Wow, I find that hard to beleave. I have lived in many areas of the world and they all have problems with the summer load, just as many gas companies do with the winter load. The utilities including telephone don't engineer their networks for the highest possible load, they try to get as close as they can. Telephone networks have blocking probabilities, power networks have load factors, etc.
Recall that a major telco failure was caused by peak loads. ATT in NYC had a contract w/Con Ed [?that's the NYC utility, ISTM] for peak shedding. Such means ATT gets a big break on their bill. So when given the word, ATT went to Plan B, starting their engine-gen's to run things. The switches never saw THAT as they run off of -48v... But the chargers for the string did, & tripped off. By the time Clue arrived; it was too late. One consquence of that was very long term. The FAA had wanted to buy diversity by getting some service from multiple carriers, but GSA refused as it would crack open the FTS-2000 contract. [FTS-2k went to 2 carriers; with half the USG agencies going to ATT and the other to MCI or Sprint, I can never recall which.] After JFK, LGA, and the ARTCC on Long Island all went silent, with ripple effect extending from Europe to LA.....GSA relented. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
On Wed, Jul 07, 1999 at 01:27:40AM -0400, Dan Foster wrote:
[perils of 24/7 airconditioning]
Hmm. Those folks might be better served by studying data center environments in the South or Southwest - ie Phoenix, Dallas, etc. Those folks generally don't seem to be unduly alarmed by operational impact since they've planned for it one way or another from day one, AFAIK.
Or those a little further south. It never gets _that_ hot here (certainly nothing to what they need to engineer around in Australia) but we have core transmission rooms that have been air conditioned 24/7 for the past seven years. If you have redundant air conditioning plant, this isn't such a drama. Joe (in rainy New Zealand)
participants (8)
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Dan Foster -
David Lesher -
Gregory Urban -
Jeremy Porter -
Joe Abley -
Nathan Stratton -
Paul Ferguson -
Sean Donelan