Last year, about this time, I asked if there was any interest in sharing
power quality data. Whether it is Northern Virginia, or Silicon Valley,
a lot of us drink from the same power pond. Its not so much a competitive
matter, as bad power will make all of us sick. Internally we all have
UPSes, generators, flywheels, etc. but we all get utility power from the
same grid.
Most of us collect a lot of data with power quality meters from our point
of view of the utility grid. But since none of us share information, none
of us really knows what the whole picture looks like. A few miles a way
the major regional power outage may show up us just a blip in the data.
And unless you were looking specifically for it, you might not have noticed.
Nevertheless, the additional data might help with the analysis, if you knew
who to ask to get it.
AOL has one of the best designed, built and operated data centers in the
world. Everyone I know who has ever seen it has been very impressed. It
would take a remarkable event to affect AOL's operation. But we are always
building based on the last earthquake, or the last hurricane or the last
power problem. So we learn every time the extraordinary happens. Other
data centers may use a very similar power design, so the extraordinary
is very much of interest.
Who knows, another data center might have already had the similar problem
and found a fix.