Re: Power monitoring Re: Power Outage in Chicago Loop

[Nathan Stratton <nathan () robotics net>]

On 9 Oct 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:

> After my first summer in PG&E country, I've been wondering if there was
> a way for ISPs to share power quality data about the local utility.  For
> the most part, every ISP in a region experiences the same woes and problems
> of the electric utility. Most ISPs are capable of at least minimal monitoring. 
> If the shared data was limited to only the upstream side of the ISPs power
> system, it would show the performance of the utility; but ISPs could still
> keep any internal problems secret.  While a power quality meter would be
> nice, even SNMP capable UPSes can report basic data.

We are just now starting to graph voltage and current on each phase as well
as DC voltage, DC Current, temp, and humidity. We are doing all this via
AI Spy units in each pop. 

<Snip>
 
> What is "normal" power throughout the country? How severe can power get?

Well that thing that freaks me out is the voltage swing over a given
day. At first I thought the problem was that the building did not have
large enough feed, but now that we are graphing voltage on other
datacenters we see the same trend. We see voltage swings in my cities of
up to 25 volts every day.

> <>
Nathan Stratton                         CTO, Exario Networks, Inc.
nathan () robotics net                     nathan () exario net
http://www.robotics.net                 http://www.exario.net

Check out telecom papers: http://www.robotics.net/papers