Re: Electric Co-Gen plants

[Dallas Thornton <dallas () SDSC EDU>]

It sounds like your campus is not architected in a way that makes CoGen supplemental or redundant to street power. I've 
heard of other campuses that were for some reason designed in the fashion, and they experienced similar problems. (I 
can share offline if you are interested.)

I's suggest you build the business case for the addition centered around the resulting costs due to loss of service 
availability, damage to the DC IT hardware, cost of staff time to bring back services, and [likely] data corruption due 
to systems going down in a bad way. There are many other components you might be able to add based on your situation 
and the types of compute loads you host in your datacenter. Do you host mission critical systems, life-safety systems, 
clinical systems, payroll systems, etc.? This is a business issue, and addressing it from the fiscal perspective is 
your best chance of freeing up funds to make it happen.

By the way, I am not an advocate of generator and/or UPS for everything. It has its place in the mission-critical and 
storage space, as does street/cogen power for non-critical research compute loads. In an academic environment, I don't 
know many institutions that can afford to have backup power for everything and remain cost-competitive. It is a luxury, 
but one that is at lease sparingly needed for critical loads. And, no, all faculty projects are not considered critical 
loads... =)

Good luck!

Dallas



From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Ray 
Bruder
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 8:52 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Electric Co-Gen plants

Dallas,
            Here is my problem.
            Over 2 years ago we had a plan and budget to add an additional UPS to our environment.  We had an aging 
18kva (which will be decommissioned within a month) and a 75kva that was approx 10 years old at the time.  We added a 
150kva with plans to put an additional 150kva unit in when it came time to replace the 75kva.  A generator was in the 
budget large enough to cover 2 150kva units and the AC cooling to the DC.  Near completion of the project the generator 
fell out of the plan (but IT was not notified).   As a result I have no backup power to the 150 or CRAC units.
            We were told the we would NEVER experience a power outage with our cogen plant.  Since that time we have 
had 5 power outages, 2 that resulted in complete drain of battery power to the 150kva unit and extensive recovery time 
and work by the IT staff.  The generator falls under the facilities guidelines.
            I am fighting to have a generator installed but running into a brick wall since the director of facilities 
is the person responsible for the purchase of the generator and also the same person responsible for the design and 
running of the cogen plant.

            Any ideas?

From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Dallas 
Thornton
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 9:37 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Electric Co-Gen plants

Yes, we still have some local diesel generator capacity but to a much more limited extent than we would were we only on 
street power. Depending on the proximity of the cogen to your datacenter, the capacity of the cogen, and the campus and 
datacenter electrical distribution design, abandoning the diesel generators might be a viable option for you, assuming 
you are not trying to alleviate downtime from all offsite causes (i.e. losing both grid power and natural gas at the 
same time).

Dallas


Dallas Thornton | Division Director, Cyberinfrastructure Services |  San Diego Supercomputer Center
University of California, San Diego | 9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0505,  La Jolla, CA, 92093
*: dallas () sdsc edu<mailto:dallas () sdsc edu> | *: (858) 534-8364 | 7: (858) 225-3661




From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Ray 
Bruder
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2009 1:50 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: [SECURITY] Electric Co-Gen plants

Are there any other universities out there who have a co-gen plant.  If you do, do you still have generators backing up 
your DC UPS units?

*****************************************
Ray Bruder
Manager, Computer Operations
Duquesne University
[cid:image004.gif@01CA1FF8.B153F3A0]
600 Forbes Ave
CTS, Rockwell Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
(412)396-5775
bruder () duq edu
*****************************************