I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago? Cutting electricity loss is one thing, but getting rid of "load shedding" (unplanned power cuts) is the really revolutionary part. It was not uncommon for the power to go out several times a day and you had to rush to unplug expensive appliances (TV, laptop), because when the power came back it was often accompanied by a surge. My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).
> My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).
This I think is a standard practice in any large office building in France (Europe? Global?) too, regardless of the frequency of the power cuts. I don't remember witnessing any power cuts in the office (not since long ago anyway), but in most of the places there are systematically white and red sockets, red ones being powered through a UPS. So, server machines go into red ones. Well, we don't have servers anymore, but the sockets are still there anyway. Hopefully UPS too, LOL.
> It's almost like grid inertia is a different problem from matching changes in demand, and nuclear really sucks at the latter...
For the recent big outage in France, neither of those was the problem. Some big transformers overloaded and there wasn't enough redundancy.
> Now everyone has all their eggs in the Amazon/Microsoft/Google basket, and instead of the (ahem, regulated) telco or electric company going out...the cloud provider does, and unlike before where you could still work locally - now you can't do anything.
> But hey, it was cheaper, right?
> Oops...
I'm not sure what you mean by "oops". Those datacenters do have downtime but companies seem to be happy sticking with them anyway. It seems like it still saves money.
motionlessveloc · · focus · HN ↗
alentred · · focus · HN ↗
This I think is a standard practice in any large office building in France (Europe? Global?) too, regardless of the frequency of the power cuts. I don't remember witnessing any power cuts in the office (not since long ago anyway), but in most of the places there are systematically white and red sockets, red ones being powered through a UPS. So, server machines go into red ones. Well, we don't have servers anymore, but the sockets are still there anyway. Hopefully UPS too, LOL.
KennyBlanken · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
Dylan16807 · · focus · HN ↗
For the recent big outage in France, neither of those was the problem. Some big transformers overloaded and there wasn't enough redundancy.
> Now everyone has all their eggs in the Amazon/Microsoft/Google basket, and instead of the (ahem, regulated) telco or electric company going out...the cloud provider does, and unlike before where you could still work locally - now you can't do anything.
> But hey, it was cheaper, right?
> Oops...
I'm not sure what you mean by "oops". Those datacenters do have downtime but companies seem to be happy sticking with them anyway. It seems like it still saves money.