Stalwart Down

If you had trouble getting to The Stalwart yesterday, it's because I use Typepad to host the site, and Typepad happens to be a client of the big San Francisco data center that crashed yesterday, bringing down half of the internet.  So far, there doesn't seem to be a single definitive answer to what happened, although it almost certainly had something to do with the power outages in San Francisco yesterday.  I found this report from Valleywag to be interesting:

365 Main, like all facilities built by AboveNet back in the day, doesn't have a battery backup UPS. Instead, they have these things called "CPS," or continuous power systems. What they are is very very large flywheels that sit between electric motors and generators. So the power from PG&E never directly touches 365 Main. PG&E power drives the motors which turn the flywheels which then turn the generators (or alternators, I don't remember the exact details) which in turn power the facility. There are 10 of these on their roof.

It goes on to explain how these CPS systems failed.

Back during the Bubble when I lived in Austin, I had a good friend that worked for Active Power (NASD: ACPW), which developed these flywheel power systems.  Active Power stock briefly got caught up in the alt-energy boom, but it was always a data center play.  At the time, what my friend told me was that data centers were buying up there products, not because of their reliability (although that was important), but because they were smaller than typical power generators, meaning that the data center would have more room for servers.  In other words, demand was so high at the time that any extra square feet that could be devoted to servers meant significantly more money.  Eventually, the market determined that there was too much capacity, and for several years, people fretted that we'd never have enough internet usage to justify all of the infrastructure that was built out during the Bubble.  That conclusion wasn't quite right, since a new wave of startups found plenty of ways to use all of that excess capacity.

Personally, I don't know a whole lot (okay, nothing) about data center design.  But if it's true that many of them are, structurally, legacies of the Bubble, I wonder how many of them have energy systems chiefly designed to maximize square footage as opposed to providing nine-nines power continuity.  Just wondering.

Comments

[Graham Evans]

I serve as a national sales manager for Active Power (www.activepower.com). I was disappointed in reading the July 25, posting titled ‘Stalwart Down.’ The posting contained inaccuracies, including the association of the recent 365 Main power failure with Active Power. Many rumors based on unfounded speculation, lacking official verification of what really happened at 365 Main on July 24, have flooded the Internet over the past few days. According to 365 Main, the root cause of the power outage has not yet been identified. It appears they are focusing their investigation on synchronization issues of the engines and open circuits on the power distribution units.

In the spirit of objectivity and accuracy, I would like to add that Active Power does not have any systems deployed at 365 Main, nor do we market systems similar to the ‘CPS’ systems currently in place at 365 Main. Active Power manufactures energy efficient, reliable and green flywheel based uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, not CPS systems. Active Power systems use an integrated flywheel approach combining the functions of a motor, flywheel rotor and generator into a unified system. The motor, which uses electric current from the utility grid to provide energy to rotate the flywheel, spins constantly to maintain a ready source of kinetic energy.

When a power disturbance occurs, the generator converts the flywheel’s kinetic energy into electricity providing short-term back-up power as the rotor's inertia allows it to continue spinning. The flywheel's speed decreases as power is transferred to the load. Additional current is then supplied to the field coil to ensure the voltage output remains constant throughout discharge. This enables the flywheel system to provide ride-through power during power disturbances. Active Power provides ride-through power for the majority of power disturbances, such as voltage sags and surges, and bridges the gap between a power outage and the time required to switch to generator power.

Flywheels are extremely space efficient, but not to the detriment of the critical infrastructure. These systems are mechanical and dynamic (spinning wheel). Thus, the systems are able to provide continuous status information that makes them extremely predictable. Would you rather rely on a static energy storage solution that provides limited to no status of readiness or would you prefer a dynamic solution that by each revolution paints an accurate and predictable real-time picture of its status right then and there? Predictability builds reliability, which is why discerning customers choose well designed systems to ensure power is always available.

In addition, typical Active Power systems are made up of a number of flywheels, not just one wheel as described in the posting. Our approach provides extremely high availability to the load while ensuring they operate in complete harmony with the back-up diesel engines located separately from the UPS and not mechanically coupled as in a CPS system. The flywheel approach typically provides up to 10 times the backup time provided by the energy storage of CPS systems. For this reason, our packaged solution gives the customer the ability to direct engine and UPS power to the critical load independent of each other should it be required. This level of compartmentalization eliminates single points of failures on the critical bus far more effectively than that of a mechanically coupled system such in a CPS system. Data center operators typically select flywheel based systems due to the overwhelming benefits in reliability they provide. It’s worth noting diesel generators use batteries to start their engines. According to the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Gold Book, a source that provides credible data concerning equipment reliability and the cost of power outages, more than 90 percent of diesel engine start failures are due to flat batteries. This is why Active Power provides complete power solutions, which can enable engine start without a starter battery. We are the only manufacturer who has addressed the issue of a workable and highly reliable power protection system that can provide hours of operation during a utility outage without the need for batteries.

I’d like to add Active Power has delivered substantially more flywheels following the March 10, 2000, collapse of NASDAQ than in any given period prior to that, dispelling the myth that equipment was largely procured by dot com companies based on immediate product availability and false benefit statements.

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