The Problem with Power

There are two unfortunate realities of the electronics age; the utility company simply cannot provide the clean, consistent power demanded by sensitive electronics, and the customer is ultimately responsible for the health and safe operation of his equipment.

A study by IBM has shown that a typical computer is subject to more than 120 power problems per month. The effects of power problems range from the subtle – keyboard lockups, hardware degradation – to the dramatic – complete data loss or burnt motherboards. According to a survey by the Yankee group, almost half of the corporations researched put their downtime costs at upwards of USD$1,000 per hour, with nine percent estimating costs up to or more than USD$50,000 per hour.

Clearly, businesses are becoming more and more reliant on a utility power supply that is pushed beyond its capacity. Despite advances in the capabilities of modern personal computers, a momentary power outage is still all it takes to lose your data. More dangerous is the loss of previously written files, or even an entire hard disk, which can occur should a power problem strike while your computer is saving a file. Network file servers constantly writing to disk are particularly susceptible.

Unfortunately the situation won’t be getting better anytime soon. It takes approximately a decade to get a new power plant online, and concerns about nuclear power and fossil fuels have still fled the construction of new generating facilities. In the United States, for instance, spending on utilities has dropped from 2.3% of the Gross National Product in the 1960s, to less than 1% today.

In certain areas of Europe, the capacity issue is even more acute, as nuclear power plants which had been supplying power are closed because of safety and modernization concerns.

It has been said that there are two types of computer users: those who have lost data because of a power problem, and those who are going to. Over the past few years, we’ve helped create a new class...those who have recognized the need for protection and taken steps to ensure that they’re prepared for the inevitable.

Power Problems are the largest cause of data loss

• Power failure/ surge: 45.3%
• Storm Damage: 9.4%
• Fire or Explosion: 8.2%
• Hardware/software Error: 8.2%
• Flood & Water damage: 6.7%
• Earthquake: 5.5%
• Network Outrage: 4.5%
• Human Error/ Sabotage: 3.2%
• HVAC failure: 2.3%
• Other: 6.7%

Source: Contingency Planning

The anatomy of a power disturbance

Surges, spikes, blackouts and brownouts...what really happens to your computer when it experiences an “out of bounds” power anomaly?

We’ll use a nearby lightning strike as an example, although it is just one of countless problems that can strike your system. Lightning strikes a nearby transformer. If the surge is powerful enough, it travels instantaneously through wiring, network, serial and phone lines and more, with the electrical equivalent force of a tidal wave. The surge travels into your computer via the outlet or network data lines. The first casualty is usually a modem or motherboard. Chips go next, and data is lost.

The utility company responds to over-voltages by disconnecting the grid. This creates brownouts and blackouts. If the power drops low enough, or blacks out, the hard disk may crash, destroying the data stored on the disk. In all cases, work-in-process stored in cache is instantly lost. In the worst case, password protection on the hard drive can be jumbled, or the file allocation table may be upset, rendering the hard disk useless.

Utility power quality trend: downward spiral strikes computers

On a windy evening last summer, in a remote area of Oregon, a swaying tree branch touched a high-voltage power line. Seconds later a massive blackout engulfed the west coast power grid. More than ten states were plunged into total darkness. Power companies claimed to have the situation in control, but fierce competition due to deregulation continues to threaten the quality and reliability of utility power.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Not so long ago, such a succession of small problems wouldn’t have caused such a widespread blackout. But nowadays, a single tree touching a wire at the wrong place in Idaho can turn out the lights in Las Vegas.

“Spurred by market liberalization and deregulation, new companies are crowding into the electric-power industry,” continued the Journal. “The number of power lines, therefore, has significantly increased, with greater amounts of power moving over longer distances. Building a foolproof system would be economically prohibitive if not technically impossible.”

“People plan for everything short of 100-years flood, but sometimes the 100-year comes twice in a year,” says Leon Lowery, a senior aide with the Federal Energy Commission in Washington. “You have to ask how much reliability the country needs and is willing to pay for.” Fortunately, these most recent major outages occurred during non-business hours or the effects could have been much worse. Most business owners simply do not know that cost-effective, reliable power protection is readily available. Too many of them find out the hard way that proper power protection is one of the wisest investments they can make.

To further support the wisdom of proper power protection one need only look a little further beyond the national headlines. The changes in the utility industry are causing more than a few outrages, and the situation doesn’t show any signs of getting better.

In fact the city council of Broomfield, CO, a Denver suburb, threatened to tear up Public Service Co’s franchise agreement because of 107 blackouts in the [preceding] year and a half. City officials blamed the poor service and inconsistent power quality on company layoffs, the telltale sign of an industry growing more competitive.

These types of outrages, even if they are momentary and minor, can cost “big money” according to Roger Dugan of Electrotek Concepts.

Because power companies buy and sell surplus power, sometimes daily power line changes need to be made which may not effect the lights but will cause sensitive electronic equipment to fall. “It’s not uncommon for a single, commonplace, momentary utility breaker operation to result in a $10,000 loss to an average sized industrial concern,” concludes Dugan.

Other experts agree that the situation will get worse before it gets better. According to a 1990 North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) publication, North America’s “safety cushion” of extra capacity was projected to drop from 137.3 gigawatts in 1990 to 119.9 gigawatts in 1999 which represents a 15.7% capacity margin. The margin was 20% in 1990 and more than 25% in 1984. Lower capacity margin means more line switching and utility breaker operation to access power form secondary utility sources. Such switching causes a power sag across a wide service area. With every percentage point that margin drops, the number of power problems increases.

More bad news came to light this year, when the results of another study of utility power capacity was released by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). The safety cushion appears to diminishing much more quickly than expected. The margin in 1995 has already slipped to a 13.2% capacity margin. Furthermore, “with greater uncertainty about the future, utilities have also deferred a substantial abound of additions originally planned for the early 1990s,” says the CERA report. If the gap between supply and demand continues to close at the same rate, many people will have restricted power consumption shortly after the year 2000.

In Saudi Arabia, a country with more than enough energy, similar power shortages and restrictions have already occurred. Because of the inability to keep pace with industry growth and customer demand, building permits are routinely denied unless contract regulating energy usage have been signed. Some factories can only operate during certain hour of the day because of these shortages in electrical power. All these restrictions are the result of an inadequate capacity margin.

The unexpected plunge in the margin in the United States was caused in part by the unplanned closure of nuclear power plants in states like Connecticut, where nuclear generated electricity accounted for at least 60% of the state’s supply. The closures resulted in widespread brownouts and blackouts. Because of ongoing concern about the safety of nuclear power, this trend could continue, drastically depleting the capacity margin, especially along the East coast, where nuclear power plants are in abundance.

The ever-increasing demand for power in the information age also helped to push down the capacity margin. In the study Analysis of Electricity Disturbances: Future trends, Venture Development Corp. (Natick, MA) estimated that in 1990 between 10 and 20 percent of electricity was used by power electronics such as computers. The firm expects this to reach 50 to 60 percent by 2010. “Overall, the reliability of electrical systems in the US almost certainly will decline over the next 10 years. However, defining where the problems will be the worst is difficult as there are so many factors involved,” concluded Venture Development.

If Venture Developments estimates for the power consumption of electronics as a percentage of total power consumption were as far off the mark as their capacity margin predictions – and CERA’s data indicates they are – 30% of the power being drawn is now heading for sensitive equipment.

The unpredictable nature of the power supply and cost to customers has been the focus of many experts in the field. “The electrical power industry is going through it’s biggest change in 60 years,” says CERA president Daniel Yergin. “Companies whose focus formerly had to be on the regulator are now turning right around to think ‘customer’. Suddenly, there are competitors, and suddenly, the cost structure looks completely different.” Yergin predicts, “This radical change is likely to go smoothly and there will be a lot of surprises.”

Many of those surprises will arrive in the form of power problems and the resulting damage or destruction of computer hardware and data. Already, studies by IBM show that the average computer experiences power problems 120 times a month. In fact, the consensus seems to be that there are two types of computer users in the world: those who have lost data due to power problems and those who are going to.

Unfortunately, according to CERA, utility companies feel that the fault lies not with them, but poorly designed, excessively sensitive electronics; the expectations of power consumers are apparently too high. On the other hand, computer manufactures and consumers point to utility power companies as the culprits. Until this impasse is resolved, the smartest way to offset the cost of downtime is a local solution, like an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

Power problems are clearly a fact of life, and with an estimated 33% of American households owning a computer (up from 15% in 1990), their negative impact on sensitive electronics now affect one third of the United States residents. Worst of all, power problems and their threat to computers sometimes have nothing at all to do with the utility companies. Many new computers find homes in apartments, houses and other buildings where the power is unstable or simply has not been designed for computers. Often, building wiring is outdated or not up to code. Sometimes a home or small office shares a power line with another office when noise or sag production equipment is in use, and the computer user doesn’t even know it. All of these unfortunate situations can lead to problems that ultimately have nothing to do with the utility company.

Yet only a relatively small number of computer users have made power protection a mandatory part of there computer purchase. Thi,s in spite of industrial appeals to protect what for most is the third largest purchase they’ll make in their lives, next to a house and a car. PC Magazine’s “perfect PC” issue recently concluded: “...for any PC today – especially if you run your business on it – [a UPS] is an indispensable peripheral.”

American Power Conversion, 1999