OT - power outages; where are they reported?

[D.M.Chapman]

Ours kicks in once a month for testing. We pull the feed for the aircon and lighting to test it kicks in ok.

Once a year we have a full test where we kill power to the datacentre and let it kick in.

heh, never really noticed that. It does cough a bit when started up but no loud bang. Does smoke a bit till it's hot though (it's kept permenantly warm with a heater in the sump but I assume that's more to keep the oil thinnish). It's amazingly quiet infact given it's a 16l engine :-)

Blimey, was that quite a while ago? Most sites that are big enough to have a gen set will have big (redundant) UPS. We've a bank of n+1 100kVA units.

To have a gen set yet not UPS is odd these days.

Darren

[David WE Roberts]

Late '70s to early '80s. ICL main frames which were incredibly sensitive to mains glitches. There were generally these big MA sets which had massive flywheels and were used to smooth out the mains, but there wasn't any UPS - presumably because the power requirements were too large. I still twitch when the lights flicker because that was the signal to run for the machine room to estimate the damage from the system crash.

[Bob Eager]

The predecessor to Darren's UPS and genset was a massive MA, which was kept for quite a while after the ICL mainframe was retired in 1986. I wouldn't be surprised to see that either batteries or genset are housed in the same place (I don't know, I stopped working for that cost centre i

1992).

The MA was incredibly reliable, although we paid ICL maintenance for about 6 years before we realised they'd never actually touched it (or rather, the contractors, who'd never been informed)! At one point they came out, dismantled it and replaced the bearings - all within 6 hours; amazing.

[D.M.Chapman]

Ah, ok. I suspected that might be the case

When I started working here we still had the MA. Must have been around

1995 that it was retired? Something like that.

Neither the gen set or the batteries are in the same place - that is now full of switch gear. Bob actually parks his car very close to the genset, so our attempts at hiding it must work. Listen carefully on the first tuesday of each month from 8:15 - 8:45 and you'll hear it :-)

are in the machine room with ducted air to keep them cool.

Bob might remember commisioning day of the current UPS - the build was almost evacuated as the wrong charger PCB had been fitted so all the batteries cooked.

Took bloke with acid proof gloves and a chisel a couple of days to remove them :-)

has a few pics. They weren't keen on us taking too many photos ;-)

I remember watching it spin down. Took a fair while with no load. Once the load was removed it was amazingly easy to spin by hand as well. Impressive bit of kit

Darren

[Bob Eager]

than most! I remember having a power cut campus-wide in November 1970, when Darwin College has just opened. Walked to the car park to get torches from car, and was greeted by a tractor towing a genset towards Darwin. They hadn't got round to a permanent installation at that point.

I have seen the photos but I wasn't there. If it's summer, I tend to work at home...apart from approx. August 15th-30th every year now.

We used to spin it down every night, and I quite often was the one to fire it up in the morning. That was because ICL wanted more money for us to run *our* mainframe overnight. We told them where to get off in the end.

First genset I saw was summer 1973, at an ICL installation in Brighton. A

1902S (I worked as an operator over the summer) at Advance Linen in Richmond Place. Had only been there a few days and had to start it all up myself due to the other two staff being stuck on the way to work. That's when I learned you pull the red knob OUT first...

[Bob Eager]

Correction, MA of course.

[Dave Liquorice]

Possibly but if the attempted theft had been succesful the cut would have been quite long.

[David WE Roberts]

Ahhhhh- 1900s :-))) Came late to the game, running DME on 2960s then 2966s. I wa well impressed by some of the water cooled 1906s - and the rooms with drums in them. And the tales of drums which did their bearings then waltzed through the machine room on their momentum.

64K memory and you ruled the world!

Don't suppose there are many openings for PLAN programmers these days, though.

[AJH]

How did you manage that?

AJH

[Tim Lamb]

In message , AJH writes

Fortuitous!

They are overdue for lattice mast replacement; the rest of the line already done. Leaving us, they cross the river twice and pass over a public recreation area before crossing an area of land owned by J. Sainsbury plc which I expect they would like to develop.

Re-routeing takes them through some elderly Maple trees so underground is favoured by all concerned.

I understand they will use a duct buried at more than 1m and plan a

185mm2 cable.

regards

[The Natural Philosopher]

yep. That's what they do. don't drive over the joints in a tractor..

[Peter Crosland]

In rural areas fed by overhead cables there are numerous minor interruptions everyday. Many are not even noticed by the consumer and are dealt with by automatic control. The only way to avoid these glitches is to have your equipment connected via a UPS. This will not only deal with the actual cuts of short duration, but also voltage fluctuations.

Peter Crosland

[Huge]

There surely are. :o|

Other than having to go round and reset all the effing clocks. Why does everything have to have a clock in it now? And our oven won't work at all unless you set its clock, so I can't just tape over the display ...

It took two of us to carry my APC SmartUPS 2200 up to my study. :o(