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3 lessons from the Blackout Bowl

Sam Jaffe, Guest Contributor — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:48:09 +0000

It’s safe to say that the electrical systems supervisor is not the person that Superdome officials wanted the world’s media to be talking about the morning after the Super Bowl. For 34 dimly lit minutes, starting early in the third quarter, that person’s competence was one of the many things that the more than one billion people watching the game were discussing.

There’s a lot we don’t know about exactly what happened when the lights went out in the Super Bowl. But here’s what we do know:

Not all the lights went out: One-third of the lights stayed on throughout that excruciating half hour. That probably means that the uninterruptable power supply system worked as planned. The only problem was that the UPS system was sized to one-third the necessary power needs of the stadium.

The lights weren’t the only things going out: The CBS announcers lost power, as apparently did the top-level cameras and the coaches’ communications systems. This points to a failure in wiring the building’s critical circuits. By far the most important thing to keep going in the case of an emergency (after emergency lighting and the PA system, both of which worked) is the power to the television operations. Television is what pays everyone’s bills, so that should have priority over other systems. It did not. Likewise, the fact that one team’s communications systems continued to work (the 49ers’) and the other’s didn’t (the Ravens), showed that someone didn’t think very clearly when designing the critical circuit design.

LEDs Still Shone: If you looked carefully at the scenes of the blackened sections of the stadium seating, you could see that the emergency stair lights were all still lit. Likewise, the exterior colored lighting that bathes the outside walls of the stadium in light was still working. That’s because it’s made up of LEDs, which consume a fraction of a percentage of the power required by the sodium high intensity discharge (HID) lamps used for the rest of the stadium lighting. Additionally, the sodium HIDs, once they went out, took another 20 minutes to regain their full luminosity. LED’s, on the other hand, require no warm-up time and sip so little electricity that managing the current for them is a much less complex task.

Engineers & Repairmen

Based on this knowledge, here are three important lessons learned from the power management debacle that was Super Bowl XLVII:

Right-sizing a UPS backup microgrid is about more than just installing a bunch of generators. The art of designing a backup microgrid is about balancing the maximum number of diesel gen-sets with the minimal amount of load. Physical space for backup gen-sets is almost always limited (especially in a flood plain like New Orleans, where generators have to be placed – at a minimum – on the second floor). Thus keeping the blackout from happening was more of a failure of critical circuit design than of generator management.
Energy efficiency counts more than backup power in times of emergency. The failure of the sodium HID lights and the long warm-up time they require would have been solved by energy efficient LED lights, which also would have reduced the load on the UPS system.
Electrical design engineers are always more valuable than electric repairmen. Designing the critical circuits to be prioritized during a power failure is a job worth doing right, as we saw on Sunday evening. The designers of the Superdome’s UPS circuitry got some things very right: the success of the emergency lighting system kept the crowd from panicking. But the problems with the broadcasting and team communications systems showed that not everything was so well-planned.

This article originally appeared on the blog of Pike Research. Pike Research, a part of Navigant Consulting’s global Energy Practice, is a market research and consulting team that provides in-depth analysis of global clean technology markets. Pike Research is also a partner of GigaOM Pro, GigaOM’s premium research service.

Image courtesy of delgaudm, Flickr creative commons.

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Deploying big data: 2012 strategies for IT departments

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:55:01 +0000

Cloud computing and big data are in the enterprise to stay. However, a recently conducted GigaOM Pro survey tells us that successfully mining data and getting the most benefit out of the cloud come with challenges: Seventy-four percent of large companies said business intelligence (BI) projects were still the domain of the IT group, and just under half of companies (45 percent) said the main reason BI projects fail is due to a lack of expert staff. This report examines the survey’s results in more depth and provides recommendations for making the most of your company’s big data.

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Startup growth and the new recruiting ecosystem

Mike Dover — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:28:05 +0000

The recruiting ecosystem is changing, led by professional social networks like LinkedIn and Viadeo and companies like Jobvite and BranchOut, which are building Facebook apps for hiring and career development. This report examines that new ecosystem and how the above and more companies are changing the way businesses find and retain their employees. Small- and medium-sized businesses can benefit from innovative technology that will help their recruiting efforts, and the cost for doing so is reasonable (and decreasing). The bottom line is that technology enables the recruiting process to be more streamlined, scientific and democratic. This report provides examples and recommendations for employers.

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Migrating media applications to the private cloud: best practices for businesses

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:01:23 +0000

If your company has a cloud application with a predictable audience size or one that is costing you more than $25,000 a month to host, you may want to consider maintaining a private cloud. This paper provides an overview of the factors that decision makers who are developing a public-to-private cloud-migration strategy should consider, recognizing that public versus private cloud strategy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It also details pitfalls that must be avoided along the way and provides a case study of Zynga, a company that has found a way to use both the private and public clouds to create a hybrid solution. Companies mentioned in this report include Akamai, Foursquare, Nimbula and ARM. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

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Two (more) signs that our economy is in trouble

Om Malik — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 19:00:17 +0000

You and I don’t need to see charts to figure out that our economy is in deep trouble. Nevertheless, here are two that show that we are facing some headwinds and the impact of that is going to be felt in the tech economy as well. In a note to their clients this morning, Macquarie Capital’s research group pointed out:

Demand for power generation in the US (Y/Y growth in demand, excluding weather-related usage) has historically tracked closely with GDP growth and declines over the past several months suggest that GDP growth will remain muted, at least over the near term.

Similarly,

FedEx and UPS shipment trends represent another indicator of consumer purchasing behavior. Shipping volume fell off dramatically in both shippers’ largest segments during the last downturn in ’08-’09 (with a more rapid and deeper impact at FDX); domestic express volume growth turned negative at FedEx in the firm’s fiscal fourth quarter ’11 (ended April ’11) and continued to decelerate through the August quarter.

More importantly, FedEx cited a more cautious outlook for volume trends through the holiday season and into early 2012. Underpinning the weakening volume trends is a slowdown in consumer demand, particularly related to consumer electronics items manufactured in Asia and shipped to U.S. consumers. FedEx CEO Fred Smith’s quote from the call (on this year’s holiday shipping season): “We don’t anticipate a significant peak this year.”

FedEx/UPS data portends bad news in particular for e-commerce companies, which in turn can have reverberations through the rest of the tech ecosystem.

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Lithium Ion Batteries Faulted for Jet Crash

Josie Garthwaite — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:52:08 +0000

A new report on the fatal crash of a UPS jet carrying a large shipment of rechargeable lithium batteries suggests that safety issues still remain for transporting these flammable devices, which are used to store energy not only for mobile phones and laptops but also a growing fleet of plug-in vehicles.

The crash, which killed both pilots, occurred near Dubai on September 3, 2010. The Boeing 747-400F jumbo jet had departed Dubai International Airport on a cargo flight toward Cologne, Germany. At 32,000 feet, 22 minutes into the flight, the crew told air traffic control on the ground in Bahrain that warning systems on the cargo compartments indicated fire in the main deck, and that they needed to land as soon as possible.

The plane turned back to Dubai, and the crew donned goggles and oxygen masks. Less than five minutes after the fire alarm, according to the report, smoke entered the cockpit, ultimately engulfing it and obscuring flight instruments. Landing gear stopped functioning, and the jet flew over the Dubai runway. The 747 ended up crashing just south of the airport on a military installation.

Package details identified “many” shipments onboard the 747 as “lithium batteries and electronic equipment containing or packed with lithium batteries.” According to the investigators, at least three shipments contained lithium ion battery packs that met criteria for hazardous materials. They “should have been shipped as regulated materials….and thus should have appeared on the cargo manifest,” in accordance with international rules for the transportation of dangerous goods. (Technical instructions established by the International Civil Aviation Organization require all dangerous goods to be packaged, and generally also restrict the quantity per package based on the degree of hazard and the type of aircraft that will carry them.)

In other words, given the known risks for some of these battery packs, they should have been clearly marked for careful handling and special treatment. Yet the investigators found that ”there were no declared shipments of hazardous materials onboard the airplane.”

The stated purpose of the preliminary report, released on Sunday by the United Arab Emirates’ General Civil Aviation Authority, is to “inform the aviation industry and the public of the general circumstances of the accident.” As the Wall Street Journal notes today, the report comes on the heels of the U.S. House of Representatives approving an aviation bill that includes “a provision effectively blocking adoption of tough new rules under consideration to crack down on air transport of lithium batteries.”

A coalition of battery manufacturers, cell phone companies, and other industry groups have opposed measures under consideration by the Obama administration for ensuring safer transport of lithium ion batteries.

The UAE investigators caution that information could still become available that would alter the report. But it’s clear at this point that lithium batteries, given the wrong combination of elements, can be dangerous at various stages in their production, shipment, use and disposal.

Late in 2009, battery recycler Toxco attributed multiple explosions and a major fire at its storage facility in Trail, British Columbia, to an internal short in one of the batteries in storage. In years past, reports and photos of laptop fires caused by overheated lithium batteries have also stoked these fears.

Just last year, in response to the deadly UPS crash near Dubai, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a safety alert on transporting lithium batteries in the cargo hold of an aircraft. The FAA advised airlines to request that customers identify bulk shipments of lithium batteries, and to stow these shipments in sections equipped with fire-suppression systems. “Lithium-ion cells are flammable and capable of self-ignition,” the agency wrote. There can be a number of triggers for self-ignition, such as “when a battery short circuits, is overcharged, is heated to extreme temperatures, is mishandled, or is otherwise defective.”

More than a few venture-backed battery companies see opportunity where lithium ion batteries fall short, and they’re building part of their business case around promises to deliver safer and more stable batteries for electric vehicles, and at higher energy densities (in general, the higher the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, the more volatile the technology).

Today’s EV manufacturers say they have largely kicked the safety challenge. Of course, they would also prefer not to talk about what can happen in the rare event of a so-called “thermal runaway” (lithium-ion batteries blow up), because they don’t want to scare potential owners in such a new market. Last fall, when Tesla Motors recalled 439 of its electric Roadsters to fix a problem with a cable that could start a fire, the company made a point of noting that the possible fire risk did not in this case involve the battery pack or power system.

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Find a Mailbox, Post Office, or UPS Location With MailboxMap

Charles Hamilton — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:00:52 +0000

I do a lot of my correspondence electronically, but sometimes I still need to mail a letter. I know where the blue US Postal Service mailboxes are in my neighborhood, but it’s getting harder to find pickup locations when I’m on the road, since USPS has removed over half of its boxes in the past 20 years.

So I’m pleased that I’ve discovered MailboxMap. It’s a simple web site built around a Google Maps mashup. Just enter an address or zip code, and it will display a map showing the locations of mailboxes in the neighborhood. Click on a mailbox icon, and it will display pickup times.

MailboxMap also shows post offices and UPS locations, complete with hours. And there’s a mobile version, which has the advantage of displaying search results in a list, making it easier to skim for late pickups. It would be nice, though, if one could search for, say, pickups after 3:00 pm, or for Saturday pickups.

It’s not a perfect service; for example, it locates Seattle’s downtown post office on the wrong side of the street. Google Maps itself locates the same address correctly, so it’s unclear what the problem is. Nevertheless, MailboxMap is a useful service.

The site has been around for a couple of years, but it seems to be up to date, as it shows a recent pickup time change for my local box. It’s probably too much to hope that USPS will buy this site and add it to usps.com.

How often do you mail letters?

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