Recently, we were working with a customer that had new diesel generators installed at several sites.  We happened to meet the generator maintenance technician at one of the sites while doing other work. An interesting discussion ensued.  It turns out that the technician, in his instructions had been told to set the maintenance routine up so that the generator ran for 15 minutes once a week, under no load.

Generators are no different than an automobile when it comes to engine maintenance.  It’s common knowledge that the worst thing you can do to an automobile engine is to only run it for 15 or 20 minutes and then shut it off. This has to do with several items that affect an internal combustion engine.

First and foremost is the oil.  Oil oxidizes while sitting in the crankcase.  This causes acids to form and chemistry to change.  What removes these acids and normalizes the oil is heat and pressure over a minimum period of time.  15 minutes is not long enough to heat the oil and maintain that heat and pressure to remove the acids that form from the oil oxidation.

Oil and heat has a secondary affect on an engine.  Oil attaches and migrates into the pores of the metal. This limits rust and other contaminates from bonding to the metals of the engine.  The classic example of this is in the form of a cast iron skillet.  Anyone who cooks knows that a well seasoned cast iron skillet will not have food stick to it. The vegetable oil permeates the pores in the iron, thus not allowing things to stick. To maintain this, you must use the skillet regularly, get it hot and allow the cooking oils to penetrate into the iron. A skillet like this also will not rust, and will last for years.

Secondly, moisture affects an engine – particularly the exhaust system.  The engine needs to heat the exhaust system enough to boil all the water condensation out.  Have you ever noticed that during the winter your car exhaust has “smoke” coming out for some time after you start it, but it disappears once the engine gets hot? That’s the water vapor escaping as the system heats up.  A generator is no different, and the exhaust system is critical to proper operation of any gen-set.

It’s important to remember that the engine is only half of the generator.  The other half, the actual generator has its issues too.  It is also affected by moisture and heat.  That is why it’s very important to exercise the system under a load.  This allows the electrical portion of the generator also to come up to operating temperature.

Lastly, the NFPA has specific standards for testing.  The critical section is in NFPA 2010 Section 110, Chapter 8.  The maintenance routine is in Section 8.4. Specifically, Section 8.4.2:

“Diesel Generator sets in services shall be exercised at least once monthly for a minimum of 30 minutes, using one of the following methods:

(2)    Under operating temperature conditions and at not less than 30 percent of the EPS nameplate kW rating”

I will take issue here: I don’t believe that monthly testing is adequate.  In our industry, and for critical sites, weekly is required, with all the above criteria met.

There are several other standards dealing with standby generators, their installation and maintenance. Specifically, NFPA 70/NEC 701, which deals directly with “Critical Operations Power Systems” and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. I would recommend that if you have not reviewed these standards, that you do so.

I’ve been reading about this now for about 2 weeks, and frankly, I wanted to have more to talk about.  In this link to the National Weather Service, you can read the official announcement, and here is a nice article in the Wall Street Journal. Having lived in the St. Louis area for over 35 years, I’ve seen lots of floods.  Of course, the flooding in 1993 was the worst (so far).

So, why am I posting this? A couple of reasons;

First, I know that not everybody pays attention to the weather service, or the news for that matter, and I wanted to “spread the word” in my own way.

Second, I wanted to reinforce maintenance and systems preparedness.

Some of the things that I have come across in my experience that happens during flooding and chronic wet conditions can really create headaches. You really don’t want to be troubleshooting a communications issue while trying to dispatch sand trucks or trying to maintain a switching station.

Things to look for primarily are weatherproofing issues.  Some may be beyond your control.  Water creeps into telephone cables all the time. This can cause noise and cross talk in analog circuits, and can cause errors on T1 lines. While fiber is somewhat immune to the water, the electronics are not. Additionally, if the fiber handholds and electronics are under water, the circuits will fail.

Water also does interesting things to microwave paths. Water has a high reflection coefficient. This is why we design in diversity when paths travel over large bodies of water. These ties back to overall system design.

So, my question is, when was the last time you tested your hot standby systems? Have you recently busied out your T1 and accepted calls on your backup trunks? For that matter, when was the last time you tested your UPS on some of your smaller sites or non-generator systems?  Have you forced a ring direction switch on your fiber or ring microwave system?  If you are running a simulcast system, how does this affect the timing and the system retraining time? Are your people trained and experienced enough to notice and respond to equipment alarms appropriately?

For some of my customers, these items are standard operating procedure, but for some, the network is taken for granted.  Let’s not take things for granted.

Introduction

In these series of posts, I plan on going through the background of Unified Communications, where it came from and how the industry and technology developed into what it is today. I’ll be doing this by breaking things down into key areas that I feel were definitive in nature and process.  The intent is to keep things on a high level and business focused; this is not intended to be a deep dive, but rather a paper from an independent source on why this important to you as a City Manager, member of a County Board of Supervisors or Rural Electric Executive.

The structure I’m planning is as follows:

• History – You can’t know where things are going if you don’t know where some of the technology and business drivers came from.
• The light turns on – When manufacturers came to realize where the real work and value was in the product(s) and where the values to their customers are.
• Standards – Standards are a integral part of technology, but standards are open to interpretation and can effect decisions long after a choice has been made.
• The Meat of the matter – How and what they’ve really unified, and how the applications play into a homogenous communications system.
• The last posts will be about applications specific that I see where Municipal Governments and Rural Cooperatives could see lower costs, increased productivity and better customer service metrics.
• Finally, a summary of the key points over what I’ve talked about.

I’m not intending to make you an expert. I just want you to feel comfortable when you have to sit in a meeting with a vendor and listen to some of the buzz words and techie talk. Of course, you could always hire a consultant.

The grand plan is to publish the final version as a white paper and make it available as a download.

This is a blog environment. I encourage comments and suggestions on these topics.