Commentary: Governments Must Generate New Solutions for Power Shutoffs

Unfortunately, much of Northern California was recently in the dark for several days at a time in many areas — and on several occasions in the past few weeks. Living in a rural area, I experienced some of the most severe results of these outages. Traffic signals were running on generators, and cell service was degraded — and absolutely zero for some carriers in the region. Many people with generators were still online, with refrigeration and TV. The bad news: Many were on generator backup power for countless hours, many for days.

High-grade government data connections remained operational during this period. However, several government systems had to rely on generator backups to function properly for the full duration of the outages. Although alternative power sources like generators are said to be designed for uninterrupted service, it is known that they can fail, just as any other motorized vehicle or machine, creating a single point of failure with the potential for full-scale resource outages.

This is not a solution that will withstand years of outages. Backup systems are designed for “temporary” relief of situations, not for ongoing, long-term issues. If this is to be the case, backup solutions will require re-architecting and further redundancy.

In many cases, Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) batteries recharge, allowing for temporary generator faults. However, where systems are smaller, battery charging is not an option and will require upgrades to generators, in some cases replacing them entirely, to increase kilowatt output. At a minimum, systems will require review and analysis to validate abilities, constraints and needs for repairs, maintenance or any other updates that have been delayed.

As a result of these new requirements, more real-time status reporting will be required to service staff. Ask yourself these questions and understand how to find the answers:

• Are we on generator power right now?
• What is the charge level of battery systems?
• Is there enough fuel?

Simple reporting to a Web or Internet of Things (IoT) application becomes essential to support staff and offices of emergency services, both on premise and offsite or at other facilities. Cloud-based reporting — most likely a GIS implementation of these statuses — can provide outside agencies, such as the California Office of Emergency Services (CalOES), a broad picture of the outages and impacts to local governments.

I have previously mentioned the government’s ascension into the cloud. These recent events provide an understanding of how government entities can benefit, strategically, from having a cloud presence. While systems are still functional, they can report to cloud-based services and applications. This can provide other agencies — CalOES or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for example — access to data that can assist them in making decisions and providing more real-time resources, relief and assistance to other local government organizations.

With potential for failures, the first thing to think about is notification of updates. With the ability to use cloud data for decision-making efforts, it is important to notify users of last updates or synchronization to these cloud services.