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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 18 2003 : 3:19:22 PM
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As everyone probably already knows by now, there was a major power outage last week, effecting Ontario, New York, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. An overload on the grid tripped the safety, which then shut down the entire grid. My power was out from roughly 4:10 PM Thursday until 8:30 PM Friday. While my servers ran for around 10 hours on battery power, this did not help as the routers in my area were without power anyway, and there was widespread Internet disruption anyway.
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Kale
Nobel Prize Winner
Canada
795 Posts |
Posted - Aug 19 2003 : 12:02:09 PM
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Heh... I skipped out of town the morning before the outage happened. I missed the whole thing. [bastard]I thought of you all while I was laying in front of the A/C in my hotel room watching TV... [/bastard] 
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Aug 19 2003 : 9:23:44 PM
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Meh, the heat didn't bother me much. I could have watched TV I guess (lots of spare UPS power), but what was the point? . Personally, I wouldn't have minded much if the power had been out for a week. I quite enjoyed living by candle light and cooking over the fire...
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Kale
Nobel Prize Winner
Canada
795 Posts |
Posted - Aug 19 2003 : 9:35:16 PM
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So do you think we'll have another blackout from people overdrawing power? Or do you think people will smarten up and keep their air conditioners off?
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BEatonNo1
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1133 Posts |
Posted - Aug 19 2003 : 10:09:52 PM
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hah... people smarter. most of the time people say well if other people are doing it then I dont need to. just like recycling, water conservation ect ect ect. however, the companies took a pretty big hit from the media, so i bet that they will really push to get prevent the problem.
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Aug 20 2003 : 09:20:41 AM
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Ontario seems to be pretty good about conserving electricity. Everyday on the radio they announce how much we have saved, and the numbers are encouraging. It's mostly business doing the savings though. I know that as soon as we had mains, I fired up all the servers at my place.
Around here, they are (finally!) bringing up all the unused reactors, so soon I am hoping we have a surplus...
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Kale
Nobel Prize Winner
Canada
795 Posts |
Posted - Aug 21 2003 : 7:50:27 PM
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Yeah, but your forum is an essential service! You have a requirement to use electricity to keep it up and running! 
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Aug 22 2003 : 4:49:31 PM
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Well, then you'll be happy to know that I'm installing a generator.
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cirvin
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1542 Posts |
Posted - Aug 22 2003 : 5:46:11 PM
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lucily for me i was on the road to pensilvania so i missed it. all the good stuff happens when i am not home. i am suprised everyone was freaking out. i don't feel sory one freakin' bit for them! the hospitals have generators anyway. people can live without a/c for a day!! plus the refridgerators can hold coolness for about 12 hors at least without much loss. damn people are pussies. pardon my languige aaron. we where without power for 3 days!! what are they complaining about!!
"it was so bad people where going to ney jersey!" -Conan O'Brien
what kind of generator? if youare going to use it alot, for extended periods of time, go with a low rpm model. like 1300
next stop: nobel prize winner! |
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Aug 26 2003 : 11:32:20 AM
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Yeah, I know. People whined so much about the lack of power. Big freaking deal...Perhaps they should get off their bloated asses and stop watching TV for a while. 
As for the generator, I will simply be connecting a spare RX-7 alternator to a Briggs and Stratton vertical shaft 3.5HP engine. Should provide 60 or so amps at 12V. Since all I care about is the UPS, I can just connect the 12V from the alternator directly to the 12V battery terminals on the UPS.
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Kale
Nobel Prize Winner
Canada
795 Posts |
Posted - Aug 26 2003 : 12:02:03 PM
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Nice! You should get some 12V lightbulbs so you can give yourself some light too. Of course you could probably see from the glow of your monitors anyway...
If I was filthy stinking rich, I'd pick up a couple of hydrogen fuel cells from Ballard. The American military has some deals with them for hydrogen backup systems. The beauty of them is they are completely quiet and don't produce much in the way of waste products, so they're very stealthy. I seem to recall seeing a prototype electric truck that could run on a built-in diesel generator, or switch to a built-in auxillary fuel cell so it could 'run silent'.
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Aug 27 2003 : 09:11:32 AM
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I'm not too worried about running anything but the servers, so I doubt lights will be an issue. It's a fairly massive UPS, so I could always connect 120V appliances to it.
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cirvin
Nobel Prize Winner
USA
1542 Posts |
Posted - Sep 05 2003 : 11:21:03 PM
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wwait. i might be a little late but if the routers are down, how can anyone see ur site? the servers may be up, but the ruters can't get the info out. where are the routers? maybie they now have generators.
next stop: nobel prize winner! |
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Aaron Cake
Administrator
Canada
6718 Posts |
Posted - Sep 08 2003 : 10:02:16 AM
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Therein lies the problem. If someone upstream is down, then there's no point keeping my servers up. However, massive blackouts are rare. It's mostly local blackouts that I am worried about.
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Brian
Apprentice
USA
106 Posts |
Posted - Sep 08 2003 : 9:25:55 PM
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I would assume that any important routers would have a good backup system, although your ISP may not....
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Epsilon!
Mad Scientist
Canada
276 Posts |
Posted - Sep 08 2003 : 9:49:20 PM
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Bell Sympatico over here was running..
-Edit
But i guess because Bell also a major telephone thingy
Edited by - Epsilon! on Sep 08 2003 9:51:04 PM |
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Topic |
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Downtime Last Week
