[Gllug] [OT]fire at redbus?

[Chris Bell]

On Wed 16 Jun, Tethys wrote:
> 
> 

> 
> Is it just me, or is anyone else concerned about power failure in their
> hosting centre? I mean, our hosted machines have two independent power
> feeds, with near instantaneous failover between the two. But even if
> those fail, the whole datacentre has UPS backup via a massive battery
> array in the basement, and two diesel generators to back those up.
> The prospect of that level of redundancy not being enough to keep the
> juice flowing is somewhat... disturbing!
> 
>

   On the day that BBC2 first went on air, television centre had completely
independant maintained mains feeds (only shared with special users such as
hospitals) coming from two directions, plus brand new emergency diesel
generators.
   The generators were not fully operational at the time, and both mains
supplies were routed through the duct at Battersea that suffered a fire. An
emergency lash-up was made by parking a mobile generator outside and
breaking into the wiring inside the building. The standby diesels were
finished ASAP, and additional connectors fitted to make it easier to bring
in additional mobile emergency generators.
   Even then nothing is completely foolproof, there must be some switchgear
for safety isolation. Outside Broadcast vehicles are normally powered via at
least two cables and associated switchgear, and one year I had to bypass a
burnt out change-over switch so that we could cover the Wimbledon Centre
Court on the final day.
   Vital equipment is fed via dual power supplies from different mains
feeds, and we have had the linking unit (two massive diodes) go up in smoke.
   We have had just about every kind of emergency standby fail at some time,
although luckily not always when it really mattered. But then it was fairly
normal to have well over 50 million people watching when things did go
wrong, and you might see it repeated several times over the next few days.

-- 
Chris Bell

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