Last week, power cuts in Maidstone disrupted a datacentre operated by CSC Alliance. This lead to a computer system failure affecting over 80 NHS hospital trusts. Such incidents highlight the need for power protection as reported by IT Week.

Viatel, a business communications service provider just released the results of a new survey of 100 top IT directors. The results show that whilst 80% have a business continuity plan, 62% do not cover their phone systems. During a power failure they are totally reliant on the mobile phones they provide to their employees. The report also found that a third of the survey respondents still suffered a week after, with some still not able to access their data systems. Michael Davies of Vitael commented: “Having a comprehensive business continuity plan in place is no longer an option but a necessity.” How true.

The recent heat wave has highlighted just how little spare electrical capacity we have within the UK. Sudden failures in London, for example, left electricity companies asking users to reduce their power demands and turn off air conditioners. With another heat wave forecast for later this month we can only expect further power problems and failures. For more information on the London power cuts see the Telegraph.co.uk article

It is amazing how many data centres out there seem to suffer from power failures. The popular website, Myspace, went down recently due to a power failure reported across the web. Guy Bunker, Chief Scientist for Symantec said that the power failure amongst other things showed ‘…the knock-on effects of not being prepared for things to go wrong.’ When the site went down, Pacman, a popular arcade game grom the 1980s was put up to keep visitors amused. Other favourites from this period include Asteroids and Space Invaders and these still beat the pants off the voilent packed games we see children playing today but that is another matter.

If the company hosting the site did have a Power Continuity plan in place then it needs to be looked at again in terms of the levels of resilience provided and its ability to recover and adapt to failures, seamlessly.

The BBC recently reported that 800 homes and businesses within the Lincolnshire area where affected by several lightning strikes which resulted in minor damage and power disruption.

This summer’s heatwave will see more power disruptions like this, especially when humidity levels are high.

When we talk about power failures few people relate them to distribution hardware failures. This recent news from Warwickshire County Cricket Club links a recent power failure to the sudden failure of a component (non-serviceable) in their local substation.

One of the most important things you need to do when running a UPS and generator set is to have regular dry runs to check for problems and issues - will the generator start, will the UPS synchronise to the generator supply and will automatic shutdown software activate for example. Unfortunately things can go wrong and such tests always need a risk assessment. This article on ZDNet shows that the unexpected can happen - in this case a switchgear fault disrupted a generator and UPS test at Redbus leading to a building evacuation and system downtime.

Imagine the effects of an entire banking system going off-line due to a power failure. Well it appears to have happened to the Abbey National on June 2nd as this article reports on thisismoney.co.uk, bringing disruption to online banking and cash machines across the UK.

I came across this article on the website for IC Huddersfield which puts a perspective on power problems and how to cope with future energy demands. It has some interesting facts and figures - especially that any effect made from generating power from alternative energy is cancelled out by a factor of four thanks to the growth in air travel.

Here’s a new way to view computer users from an article in Local London. There are two types of computer user in the world: “those who have lost all their data because of a power problem and those who are going to.” Get’s you thinking as to which camp you fall into doesn’t it ?

A few seconds without power is all it takes for services to fall down and it can take hours to get back up and running. This is what happened to Plusnet last Thursday afternoon who lost power and services for their website and some web based services.