Re: Re[2]: telehouse - 25 broadway

[kevin pop account <kevin () gannons net>]

I certainly know over on this side of the water 
large electricity customers with generators
have a very valid reason to run long tests.
Basically the national grid gives you a *huge*
discount if you run on generators at peak
times which is usual 6pm to 5am. I certainly
now all our larger CO's run the gens like this.
The first time I saw this I thought the CO
was on fire due to the diesel fumes the voice
guys had a good laugh at me !.

Before someone asks we have a very steady national
supply over here so running the gens is purely
a commerical aim.I would have thought that even
stateside this would make sense no ?

Regards,
Kevin

On 15 Sep 2001, Sean Donelan wrote:

> I'm sure a full analysis will be performed after the recovery
> efforts are completed.  I'm also certain the operators of
> both 25 Broadway and 32 Old Slip are working very dilgently
> to get them running.
>
> But I would like to point out, no one regularly runs their
> generators for 48+ hours as part of a normal test.  In addition,
> most standby generators are fitted only for "limited" duration
> runs.  You should expect problems during any extended run of a
> generator plant.  I'm a bit surprised that 25 Broadway and
> 32 Old Slip are the only ones we've heard about.
>
> Until I know a bit more about what happened, I can't say
> whether any alternative design could have performed better.
>
> On Sat, 15 September 2001, Joe McGuckin wrote:
> > Was this unit tested regularly? With a load bank?
> >
> > If there was a weekly test run, why wasn't this problem caught?
> >
> > It seems like there's a lesson to be learned here.
> >
> > My guess is that many sites' idea of a periodic test is to fire up the 
> > generator (without a load) for 5 or ten minutes and assume everything's ok.
> >
> > How many folks actually perform a load transfer to the generator during
> > testing to check out the transfer switch ?