Four widespread campus power outages that started last Tuesday have plunged the campus in and out of darkness, causing disruptions such as a loss of power to the Engineering 3 classroom and fire alarms going off in Baker-Berry Library. Frank Roberts, director of operations for Facilities Operation and Management, said that problems with the College's electricity provider and a control circuit were to blame for the outages. He was unsure as to how long it would take to fix the control circuit.
The power outages knocked out voicemail from Tuesday to Wednesday and a more limited power outage took down Voice Over Internet Protocol phones two Wednesdays ago, according to Kiewit Computing Technical Services Director David Bucciero. He added that people might have lost internet access because some people plug Ethernet cables into their VOIP phones rather than directly into an Ethernet outlet.
Roberts said that FO&M had been informed that power outages also may have disrupted physics research.
"I'm not sure if equipment was damaged, but I believe data was lost," Roberts said.
FO&M representatives Ken Packard and Laura Black met with Bucciero and fellow Kiewit representative Frank Archambeault on Friday morning to discuss the problems the outages were causing to the campus VOIP and voicemail systems. The meeting resulted in two improvements: upgraded backup power supplies and an agreement with FO&M that they would reset the breaker for the VOIP and voicemail systems within 10 minutes.
Roberts said that trees falling on power lines owned by National Grid, the College's electricity provider, caused fluctuations in the electricity supplied last Tuesday and Sunday. Though the College produces some of its own power, Roberts said that it was unable to pick up all of the slack, resulting in power outages.
"We have protective relays in place that separate us because the College does not want an event on the National Grid system to damage the College's generators, so there are safeties in place to prevent this," Roberts said. "So when we see that from National Grid, we trip [the breaker] and go offline."
Roberts said that a problem with one of the College's control circuits, which controls whether or not electricity is allowed to pass through a circuit breaker, caused the outages last Thursday and Friday. Roberts said that he believes that the problem has to do with the control circuit that controls the incoming power supply from National Grid.
Roberts said that he was "not surprised" by the National Grid issue, noting that trees falling on lines is nothing new, but said that he was concerned about the control circuit.
"This is a new problem," he said.
He said that FO&M has to review the wiring diagrams, especially any recent changes, and make sure that everything functions correctly. Caution is especially important, Roberts said, because reconnecting a faulty control circuit can cause an outage, which he said is what happened last Friday.
"We thought something was clean and we put it back in service, and that caused the trip in that control," Roberts said.
Roberts said that the power outage last Tuesday might have caused damage to a control circuit.
Bucciero said that there was no permanent damage to voicemail or VOIP equipment and that no voicemails were lost.
Despite the headache the outages caused, Bucciero said that he thought that they pointed out problems that Kiewit and FO&M need to overcome.
"Sometimes having these problems is a good thing. This hasn't happened to us before and we've had VOIP for 3 years," he said.
Bucciero also said that he was "absolutely" satisfied with FO&M's response to the outages.
"Sh*t happens sometimes, we're guilty of making changes sometimes that we don't think will affect our users, but sometimes they do, and they've been extremely helpful," Bucciero said. "There are life-safety issues with the phones, and they know that. We've got a good working relationship and we hope to keep it that way."
Cher Zhao '08 said that she was caught in three power outages -- two in the library and one in her Spanish 65 class.
"When I was in class, power went out for about 10 minutes, but class kept on going in the dark," Zhao said. "When I was in the library, the fire alarms went off and we had to evacuate."
Roberts confirmed that fire alarms did go off in the library during outages, but said that it was a problem with the sprinkler system that FO&M plumbers had fixed.
Roberts said that he saw three outages in the summer of 2000, and that the four this week mark a new record in the nine years he has worked for the College.
"I can remember summers when there were none," he said.
