On-site fuel storage is one of those double-edge swords. Without on-site
fuel there are several "ordinary" disasters which would be worsened if
the telecommunications infrastructure went dark. For example, during ice
stores, hurricanes, etc we want telecom facilities to stay up for one,
two
or three days, depending on how long you believe it will take for the
roads to be passible for fuel trucks or the power to be restored.
This is a good example of an area where governments can intervene and do
some good.
1. Local governments can prohibit fuel storage and generators at telecom
sites.
2. Local governments can make it easy for telecom site operators to set up
local generators and store fuel at sites that are near the telecom sites
but not too near.
Right now, people put the generators and the fuel in the same building
because it is virtually impossible to install your own neighborhood power
cabling. But there are few disaster scenarios in which a PoP would be
undamaged at the same time as the nearby powerstation is out of action or
disconnected. If the local power cable takes a different route from the
power utility's cable then backhoe disease is avoided. If the local
powerstation blows up, we are happy because the PoP is still running on
utility power unlike the current situation.
In fact, a single municipality could plan this as an integral part of
their telecom infrastructure so that there are multiple telecom hotels
spread far enough apart to avoid fate sharing and each one of them could
be served by two local power stations, each of which serves several
telecom hotels. These would also be spread apart to avoid fate sharing
with utility power substations and cabling.
If you were offered a colo facility that supplied AC power from one
utility and two local generator substation sources, would you rate this
better or worse than a colo facility that contained its own in-house
generators and fuel storage tanks?
P.S. What if the colo facility offered built-in water chillers for cooling
with all the water piped downhill, down the block to a cooling tower?
Would this be better or safer than existing systems? Could it possibly be
built this way without municipal government involvement?
--Michael Dillon
