Power cuts

[Yas786]

Had a powercut in my office block today in the docklands, suffice to say i wasnt pleased as it was quite sudden. Good thing i have my servers on a ups backup so i could shut them down safely...last thing i need is my servers going kaput.

Power only came back on after a few hrs thankfully.

 

[Ricochet J]

Had a powercut in my office block today in the docklands, suffice to say i wasnt pleased as it was quite sudden. Good thing i have my servers on a ups backup so i could shut them down safely...last thing i need is my servers going kaput.

Power only came back on after a few hrs thankfully.

Wasn't Canary Wharf was it, by any chance?

 

[PeterNem]

i live in north London, have done for six years.

haven't had a powercut yet.

That's our problem....


2 years ago we moved about 0.8 miles down the road. In our old house we hadn't had a powercut for 4 or 5 years, but since moving here it's been on and off like a yo-yo.

 

[OllyM]

One powercut on it's own is occasionally inevitable, but over the last week it's felt like living in a thirld world country here (ok, not quite, but it's been a bloody pain).

Funnily enough, I thought exactly the same yesterday, when our power went off for over an hour. It seems that after thunderstorms, it'll die, without fail, a day later.

We've had at least 4 fairly long power cuts in as many months, plus lots of brownouts. It's really irritating...

 

[Mattus]

It's worth pointing out that everytime the power has gone off has been during fine weather (no wind, rain, storm or anything).

The fine weather is probably why it went off... the heat is stressing the network, especially with people running air-conditioners etc. constantly.

 

[wolvotim]

The summer isn’t really any different to the winter when you look at network loading to be honest. Faults are just random unless we have thunder, lightening and gales. Distribution company’s just use that excuse to shift the blame onto the customers.

 

[PlacidCasual]

As I said in a SC post, we have had 4 NISM (notice of insufficient system margin) in the last two weeks.
Rather unusually we are getting summer peaks in demand, these are smaller than winter peaks but in the summer many generators have statuatory summer maintenance and inspection periods.
The advent of affordable air conditioning witht the ubiquity of computers in the office means we are having our highest ever levels of air conditioning demand and associated electricity demand.

Think about what ways you can reduce your heat load and do your bit to reduce *** AC demand.

 

[Clarkey]

not had a power cut in years here

 

[Bri]

So, I think a complaint is order. Any of you complained to an electricity supplier before? Did anything come of it? Is it reasonable to expect some for of compensation or will they just say that because the power was off we werent getting billed for the supply and we've still only paid for what we've used?

Complaining to your electricity supplier (who you pay your bills to), won't do any good as they have nothing to do with the network.

You need to address the complaint to your local distributor.

 

[Beansprout]

Hmm. Bought a core duo laptop the other week. Had it running 24/7. Now there's posts about power cuts.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT! I'm sorry guys!

 

[Augmented]

Good thing i have my servers on a ups backup so i could shut them down safely...last thing i need is my servers going kaput.

Don't bank on UPS to save the day. When NE London was hit by a power cut last Sunday, it took down the whole of Level3 at Goswell Road...

Level 3 has a little lie-down in the sun

Level 3's data centre on Goswell Road suffered a five-hour outage on Sunday when uninterruptible power supplies got interupted. The hot weather in London meant the company was unable to keep temperatures down earlier on in the week - despite the help of the London Fire Brigade.

The company which, according to its website, is "widely recognised for its culture of technology innovation and leadership", could not keep temperatures within the Service Level Agreements. Which didn't upset customers half as much as the five hour downtime they suffered on Sunday.

According to some emails received at Vulture Towers, the generators failed to work and the batteries began giving up over the next two hours.

One source continued: "Level 3 charges tens of thousands of pounds in premium for power for it's datacentre class power backups, and boasts that its onsite generators in Goswell Road are deemed 'nationally important infrastructure' which enables them to get priority supplies of diesel. Good to see that's money well spent, given the care and attention that's clearly been paid to their maintenance."

The last problem, that we heard about, at Level 3 in the UK was at its Braham Street data centre in March when the building had to be evacuated after the sprinkler system went wrong and doused high voltage equipment in water.

Level 3 declined to comment. ®

Wasn't best pleased about that.