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If you have work that can be destroyed by a power outage you should plan accordingly. Power outages are a normal thing and can happen at any time, especially in

If you have work that can be destroyed by a power outage you should plan accordingly. Power outages are a normal thing and can happen at any time, especially in areas with earthquake and fire risks. Not preparing is foolish.

thrower123 7y ago
Baffling that they couldn't have a diesel generator handy. One can rent an inverter, like for portable lighting units or a Lincoln welder, pretty readily and for relatively inconsequential sums in most cases.
- techdevangelist 7y ago
  They are easy to acquire, as long as everyone else doesn’t need one at the same time. Heck even just securing a diesel delivery during a widespread event can be impossible, which is why you need some onsite for multiple days (if possible). Sadly you need to plan for these well in advance and be willing to sink significant resources.
  - thrower123 7y ago
    This is probably the reality now. Unless we're going to make the investments to actually maintain and upgrade the grid and infrastructure, preparedness and whatever amount of self-sufficiency that can be achieved is going to be necessary. It is a horrible cliche, but failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Possibly this is a case of California climate biting them. A lot of the big research universities in the Northeast have steam plants, originally for heat, but often with cogen facilities as well. Usually not much, a meg or two, but it is something.
- trothamel 7y ago
  I suspect in most cases, those prices assume that demand is pretty low. When you have a regional power outage, it seems likely that limited supply will raise the price of these backup power.
xoa 7y ago
Plus it's... California. UC Berkeley is literally a 44 mile drive (reported as 1 hr 19 min right now) from Tesla's HQ. Generators do present some retrofit issues, but now that I read this I'm actually moderately surprised they haven't long since investigated at least a few Powerwalls for various labs. UC Berkeley has a $4.5+ billion endowment IIRC, and on the scale of lab equipment, grants, and how much value would be lost if even a single experiment or sample set was in fact destroyed it does seem like a weird oversight. PG&E's woes are hardly breaking news either, nor are fire seasons even ignoring any other disasters. I mean, I'm used to IT in general, and security in particular, being treated as a cost hole and given as skimpy as budget as possible and then some until something breaks. But at least that's more intangible, and I guess from a cold hold MBA point of view it's not as if most places are really punished that hard for security breaches unfortunately. But power loss and having valuable work/material lost every year seems like it should be more tangible.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  I expect this whole experience to be a boon for Tesla's powerwall and solar panel sales. It's hard to imagine a better advertising campaign for those products.
Maxious 7y ago
Be Elon: > Tesla factory unlikely to lose power even if most of Fremont does because of agreement with PG&E https://twitter.com/PBRStreetGang7/status/1181783935413436416 https://twitter.com/PBRStreetGang7/status/118178393541343641... ( disclaimer: might be usual twitter humbug https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-crowd-sourced-social-media-swarm-that-is-betting-tesla-will-crash-and-burn-20190409-p51ck5.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-crowd-sourced-so... )
- baddox 7y ago
  So, be corrupt? There’s no other way to describe a deal that a large company can make with the electricity company to keep its electricity running when the electricity company shuts off everyone else’s power.
  - mc32 7y ago
    :::erm::: The State Gov and PG&E. Do you think there isn't corruption right there? The more regulation, the more opportunity for extraction/corruption. Who's doing the inspections, who gets contracted to clear brush, who gets power, who doesn't, etc. It's kinda like MUNI, just not quite there, but I don't doubt Sacramento can get them to EDELCA.
    - baddox 7y ago
      No, I very much think there is vast corruption all the way up and back.
  - core-questions 7y ago
    Why is this automatically corruption? They're no doubt paying for the privilege.
    - baddox 7y ago
      Huh? The part where they pay doesn’t make it not be corruption.
cbkeller 7y ago
For academic scientists, it's not always up to us. Just going out and renting a generator and hooking that up to our instrumentation ourselves may be technically possible (plus or minus various building code and safety issues), but by that time the damage is probably already done, so backup power really needs to be formally installed. We can beg the facilities and maintenance dept to install proper backup power, but unless we managed to get that written into our startup budget at the time of hiring, the money is probably not going to appear.
- ngcc_hk 7y ago
  Then you should not do it. It is a calculated risk and you have not be able to afford it, not doing it or accept the consequence. Frankly cannot have 99.9999 power in any case. Too expensive in the power company side. Average and the special issue.
  - happytoexplain 7y ago
    >you have [to] be able to afford it, not [do] it or accept the consequence What 4th option are you criticising? Unless you're saying that if they don't immediately throw up their hands, try to do nothing, and go home when the power goes out, they're not "accepting the consequences"?
  - humanistbot 7y ago
    They don't need 99.9999% power uptime, it is common to have UPS backups for critical equipment to cover brownouts and even day-long outages. This has been going on for 3 days and might last 5. That's not even 90% / one-nine uptime on a monthly basis.
humanistbot 7y ago
They do plan accordingly, but not for this kind of extended outage. Labs with critical equipment always have backup UPS or two (or 3!), but only enough to last for hours or possibly a day. The UC-Berkeley campus is going on day 3 without power, and PG&E has said it may be 5 days.
- melling 7y ago
  Maybe this would be a good time for college campuses and large companies to consider installing solar and batteries. What ever happened with Bloom Energy? they don’t get much press. https://www.bloomenergy.com/ https://www.bloomenergy.com/
  - wahern 7y ago
    They're silently making sales around the country. I've seen their installations at a few places in the Bay Area. My guess, tacitly acknowledged by a friend I bumped into several years ago who was a sale rep, is that because their technology doesn't have strong patent protection (just a productization of long-existing tech), and the margins slim to none, they're careful to avoid inviting competition, and presumably can't afford to burn much money on flashy campaigns, anyhow. Hopefully the outages will give them a bump as it seems like precisely the sort of no-nonsense solution to on-site power generation needed by light industrial customers, such as labs and smallish data centers.
melling 7y ago
Do we really want everyone on diesel backup generators?
- techdevangelist 7y ago
  It’s really difficult to beat diesel for many reasons, sure solar + batteries is with enough for though. But what if you need to augment beacause some were damaged in a weather event, IR dropped us a secondary genset next day after a tornado (mind you precontracted). Other fuel options exist but you can’t rely on piped natural gas in a highly active seismic zone (as they shut off entire areas after an earthquake to limit leaks). Diesel is stable for long periods, if it’s inundated with washer can be mechanically separated, then you add on the safety aspect of it being less ‘energetic’ than gasoline. Not saying there aren’t other options, just the one most businesses have opted for, and has the best ‘vendor’ support (plenty of fuel companies to deliver, rental agencies to arrange the delivery, and companies that Veratis that setup the building side needs)
  - melling 7y ago
    Well, in the event of a natural disaster... I’m merely talking about situations where everything is fine except for the occasional brownout or blackout. We are trying to move towards greener electricity. Wouldn’t it make sense for parts of California, for example, to generate some of that electricity locally?
blattimwind 7y ago
> Power outages are a normal thing and can happen at any time I cannot recall a single power outage in my home city that lasted longer than ~three hours. And even those "couple hours" outages are extremely rare, much less than once a year I would wager. According to the statistics, the expected unavailability in my country is around 0.002 - 0.003 %. That's hardly something I would describe as a "normal thing" that "can happen at any time". That's a really rare thing. The "SAIDI" value here is under 15 minutes. Meanwhile the median SAIDI of the US is ~1.5 hours. That still doesn't sound like a common thing.
- wglb 7y ago
  I lived in a very nice north shore suburb of Chicago for about 10 years, and we had one power outage that lasted four days. If I had critical stuff going on at home, like some key medical equipment, or other such process, I would make an investment in finding out how to cover for a multi-day outage.

thrower123 7y ago

Baffling that they couldn't have a diesel generator handy. One can rent an inverter, like for portable lighting units or a Lincoln welder, pretty readily and for relatively inconsequential sums in most cases.

techdevangelist 7y ago
They are easy to acquire, as long as everyone else doesn’t need one at the same time. Heck even just securing a diesel delivery during a widespread event can be impossible, which is why you need some onsite for multiple days (if possible). Sadly you need to plan for these well in advance and be willing to sink significant resources.
- thrower123 7y ago
  This is probably the reality now. Unless we're going to make the investments to actually maintain and upgrade the grid and infrastructure, preparedness and whatever amount of self-sufficiency that can be achieved is going to be necessary. It is a horrible cliche, but failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Possibly this is a case of California climate biting them. A lot of the big research universities in the Northeast have steam plants, originally for heat, but often with cogen facilities as well. Usually not much, a meg or two, but it is something.
trothamel 7y ago
I suspect in most cases, those prices assume that demand is pretty low. When you have a regional power outage, it seems likely that limited supply will raise the price of these backup power.

xoa 7y ago

Plus it's... California. UC Berkeley is literally a 44 mile drive (reported as 1 hr 19 min right now) from Tesla's HQ. Generators do present some retrofit issues, but now that I read this I'm actually moderately surprised they haven't long since investigated at least a few Powerwalls for various labs. UC Berkeley has a $4.5+ billion endowment IIRC, and on the scale of lab equipment, grants, and how much value would be lost if even a single experiment or sample set was in fact destroyed it does seem like a weird oversight. PG&E's woes are hardly breaking news either, nor are fire seasons even ignoring any other disasters. I mean, I'm used to IT in general, and security in particular, being treated as a cost hole and given as skimpy as budget as possible and then some until something breaks. But at least that's more intangible, and I guess from a cold hold MBA point of view it's not as if most places are really punished that hard for security breaches unfortunately. But power loss and having valuable work/material lost every year seems like it should be more tangible.

newnewpdro 7y ago
I expect this whole experience to be a boon for Tesla's powerwall and solar panel sales. It's hard to imagine a better advertising campaign for those products.

Maxious 7y ago

Be Elon: > Tesla factory unlikely to lose power even if most of Fremont does because of agreement with PG&E https://twitter.com/PBRStreetGang7/status/1181783935413436416 https://twitter.com/PBRStreetGang7/status/118178393541343641... ( disclaimer: might be usual twitter humbug https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-crowd-sourced-social-media-swarm-that-is-betting-tesla-will-crash-and-burn-20190409-p51ck5.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/the-crowd-sourced-so... )

baddox 7y ago
So, be corrupt? There’s no other way to describe a deal that a large company can make with the electricity company to keep its electricity running when the electricity company shuts off everyone else’s power.
- mc32 7y ago
  :::erm::: The State Gov and PG&E. Do you think there isn't corruption right there? The more regulation, the more opportunity for extraction/corruption. Who's doing the inspections, who gets contracted to clear brush, who gets power, who doesn't, etc. It's kinda like MUNI, just not quite there, but I don't doubt Sacramento can get them to EDELCA.
  - baddox 7y ago
    No, I very much think there is vast corruption all the way up and back.
- core-questions 7y ago
  Why is this automatically corruption? They're no doubt paying for the privilege.
  - baddox 7y ago
    Huh? The part where they pay doesn’t make it not be corruption.

cbkeller 7y ago

For academic scientists, it's not always up to us. Just going out and renting a generator and hooking that up to our instrumentation ourselves may be technically possible (plus or minus various building code and safety issues), but by that time the damage is probably already done, so backup power really needs to be formally installed. We can beg the facilities and maintenance dept to install proper backup power, but unless we managed to get that written into our startup budget at the time of hiring, the money is probably not going to appear.

ngcc_hk 7y ago
Then you should not do it. It is a calculated risk and you have not be able to afford it, not doing it or accept the consequence. Frankly cannot have 99.9999 power in any case. Too expensive in the power company side. Average and the special issue.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  >you have [to] be able to afford it, not [do] it or accept the consequence What 4th option are you criticising? Unless you're saying that if they don't immediately throw up their hands, try to do nothing, and go home when the power goes out, they're not "accepting the consequences"?
- humanistbot 7y ago
  They don't need 99.9999% power uptime, it is common to have UPS backups for critical equipment to cover brownouts and even day-long outages. This has been going on for 3 days and might last 5. That's not even 90% / one-nine uptime on a monthly basis.

humanistbot 7y ago

They do plan accordingly, but not for this kind of extended outage. Labs with critical equipment always have backup UPS or two (or 3!), but only enough to last for hours or possibly a day. The UC-Berkeley campus is going on day 3 without power, and PG&E has said it may be 5 days.

melling 7y ago
Maybe this would be a good time for college campuses and large companies to consider installing solar and batteries. What ever happened with Bloom Energy? they don’t get much press. https://www.bloomenergy.com/ https://www.bloomenergy.com/
- wahern 7y ago
  They're silently making sales around the country. I've seen their installations at a few places in the Bay Area. My guess, tacitly acknowledged by a friend I bumped into several years ago who was a sale rep, is that because their technology doesn't have strong patent protection (just a productization of long-existing tech), and the margins slim to none, they're careful to avoid inviting competition, and presumably can't afford to burn much money on flashy campaigns, anyhow. Hopefully the outages will give them a bump as it seems like precisely the sort of no-nonsense solution to on-site power generation needed by light industrial customers, such as labs and smallish data centers.

melling 7y ago

Do we really want everyone on diesel backup generators?

techdevangelist 7y ago
It’s really difficult to beat diesel for many reasons, sure solar + batteries is with enough for though. But what if you need to augment beacause some were damaged in a weather event, IR dropped us a secondary genset next day after a tornado (mind you precontracted). Other fuel options exist but you can’t rely on piped natural gas in a highly active seismic zone (as they shut off entire areas after an earthquake to limit leaks). Diesel is stable for long periods, if it’s inundated with washer can be mechanically separated, then you add on the safety aspect of it being less ‘energetic’ than gasoline. Not saying there aren’t other options, just the one most businesses have opted for, and has the best ‘vendor’ support (plenty of fuel companies to deliver, rental agencies to arrange the delivery, and companies that Veratis that setup the building side needs)
- melling 7y ago
  Well, in the event of a natural disaster... I’m merely talking about situations where everything is fine except for the occasional brownout or blackout. We are trying to move towards greener electricity. Wouldn’t it make sense for parts of California, for example, to generate some of that electricity locally?

blattimwind 7y ago

> Power outages are a normal thing and can happen at any time I cannot recall a single power outage in my home city that lasted longer than ~three hours. And even those "couple hours" outages are extremely rare, much less than once a year I would wager. According to the statistics, the expected unavailability in my country is around 0.002 - 0.003 %. That's hardly something I would describe as a "normal thing" that "can happen at any time". That's a really rare thing. The "SAIDI" value here is under 15 minutes. Meanwhile the median SAIDI of the US is ~1.5 hours. That still doesn't sound like a common thing.

wglb 7y ago
I lived in a very nice north shore suburb of Chicago for about 10 years, and we had one power outage that lasted four days. If I had critical stuff going on at home, like some key medical equipment, or other such process, I would make an investment in finding out how to cover for a multi-day outage.