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One thing that I was very impressed with was how well the cellphone network dealt with the outage, for at least 24 hours all the base stations worked, after tha

One thing that I was very impressed with was how well the cellphone network dealt with the outage, for at least 24 hours all the base stations worked, after that point they slowly dropped out one by one as their batteries ran dry. As decedents of an industry that was paranoid enough to generate power for their own equipment, its nice to see some of the cell phone companies take power seriously. It would be nicer if they could last a bit longer.

mrtksn 7y ago
They do have emergency base stations mounted on vans with diesel generators, these can run indefinitely.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  As long as they have diesel.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Diesel is pretty easy to get. Even in a power outage you can open the stations reservoirs and pump it out manually the main issue is getting the station to agree to it, makes sense for a single big customer but not to do it for everyone looking to gas up their car.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Only if the depots have gravity drops, if their pumps are electric and the reservoirs underground then you're not going to be able to pump it out to the surface. Fortunately most depots are aboveground and only need a tap to be opened to drop their fuel into a truck. A person looking up their car would not even be allowed on the grounds. Besides that the volume dispensed is way too high to deal with in a normal vehicle, you're looking at 1000's of liters / minute.
      - rtkwe 7y ago
        No I'm talking about at the individual stations. There are hand or battery operated pumps that could easily fuel trucks for refueling places like cell towers or other critical places with generators.
        jacquesm 7y ago
        Ah I see what you are getting at, you'd use the drop ports to pump fuel out. That works as long as they are not buried too deep, and no gas station owner would let you submerge a pump to push up. A typical station has anywhere from 50K to 1M liters of underground capacity so that should be enough for a bit, if their own pumps aren't running then they will likely be happy to be able to sell some of it.

mrtksn 7y ago

They do have emergency base stations mounted on vans with diesel generators, these can run indefinitely.

jacquesm 7y ago
As long as they have diesel.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Diesel is pretty easy to get. Even in a power outage you can open the stations reservoirs and pump it out manually the main issue is getting the station to agree to it, makes sense for a single big customer but not to do it for everyone looking to gas up their car.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Only if the depots have gravity drops, if their pumps are electric and the reservoirs underground then you're not going to be able to pump it out to the surface. Fortunately most depots are aboveground and only need a tap to be opened to drop their fuel into a truck. A person looking up their car would not even be allowed on the grounds. Besides that the volume dispensed is way too high to deal with in a normal vehicle, you're looking at 1000's of liters / minute.
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      No I'm talking about at the individual stations. There are hand or battery operated pumps that could easily fuel trucks for refueling places like cell towers or other critical places with generators.
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        Ah I see what you are getting at, you'd use the drop ports to pump fuel out. That works as long as they are not buried too deep, and no gas station owner would let you submerge a pump to push up. A typical station has anywhere from 50K to 1M liters of underground capacity so that should be enough for a bit, if their own pumps aren't running then they will likely be happy to be able to sell some of it.