[EAS] Back up power notes

[Schall, Tim]

It appears that original thread got, sort of, "hijacked," so I will start a new one if we're going to carry on about backup power.

We're in a two story building in downtown Seattle near the Seattle Center.  City water pressure is sufficent enough that our toilets don't require pumps, so we're OK there.  We also had a technical power system and an emergency lighting system (including the bathrooms) already in place, so when we installed the generator we just broke away the tech power system and the emergency lights and wired them to the new UPS/GenSet system.  Two seperate transfer switches were installed for the HVAC (No UPS) and the tech core/phones/servers/etc.... (with a UPS).

The elevator was another story entirely.  As we have a wheel chair confined employee it was already on our radar but the City of Seattle told us that if we put a generator in that it absolutly must power the elevator.  So they solved that problem for us.

The coffee makers he says?  Uh-Oh, short story long, we have a monster duty extension cord coiled up that we run down the hall to a 30amp twist lock in the power room if we have to have it.  But, as others have pointed out, most of our outages are planned.  I bet we haven't been on the machine in anger for 10 hours since we put it in.  Brew half a dozen pots before the outage hits and we're usually good.  If not, the Starbucks across the street is on a different grid and has yet to be down when we are, plus our vacum pots fit in their coffee makers.

So what, other than the coffee makers, did we miss in the design.  Personal experience now demands that I tell you to check and make sure that card based building access systems still work.  While our card readers and control systems were on technical power, the solenoids that actually open the doors, were not.  Whoops.  You can't get into the building without a key all of a sudden and I bet no one here can guess who the closest guy with a key is.....

We do not power most offices, most desktop computers, general purpose office lighting, etc.... from the generator.  If the outage becomes protracted for some reason then non-essential personnel get sent home.

I'd sure be interested to hear how others handle their backup power.

Tim Schall
KCTS9, Seattle