[roadcat]

Police were on a city-wide tactical alert Friday after a power outage at one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s two dispatch centers.

Not supposed to happen, as they should have a backup generator. I was involved in the build of San Francisco's new dispatch center. Backup generators are tested constantly, as are supplies of fuel, and they kick in immediately if outside power sources are interrupted. Was also involved in a build of a data center for the SF Health department, where outside contractors were responsible for the power setup. That data center went live for about a month when there was a power outage, and the generator failed after five minutes. Oops, the contractors failed to fuel the generator. Rules were put in place to have operators check supplies monthly and do backup generator testing.

[acapesket]

My flipping home generator tests itself every week at a certain time for twenty minutes, an alarm goes off if it is down or my guy is notified via cell phone.
How Mickey Mouse is Mickey Mouseville?

[Myrddin]

During my stint at the PacBell Trade St data center in San Diego, we had an SDG&E outage in nearby Mira Mesa. The co-gen plant onsite was supposed to let go of SDG&E and keep the data center up. The device didn't let go and the co-gen plant was trying to hold up all of Mira Mesa. That worked for a few minutes before the gear boxes failed on the natural gas turbines. The diesels fired up to cover the gas turbine loss. Meanwhile, inside, we were madly racing around performing disciplined shutdowns of very large mainframes as the UPS batteries only have 30 minutes capacity to hold while the co-gen facility switches "mains" supplies. It took weeks to repair the damage.

[mabarker1]

Good grief!!! No excuse for them to not have a Backup Gen. Heck the Water Plants I worked at had Autostart and Switch Over. We were required to test the System every month, once for Nightshift and once for Dayshift. We basically did it twice a month as We staggered the tests.