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Re: Looking for advice on datacenter electrical/generator

  • From: Stephen Sprunk
  • Date: Fri Apr 04 19:45:14 2003 
Thus spake "Bill Woodcock" <[email protected]>
>       On Fri, 4 Apr 2003, Matthew Kaufman wrote:
>     > natural gas has been off for multiple days in a row twice.
>     > So for the last datacenter I built, I went with diesel.
>
> I'm not following your logic...  How does the fact that natural gas
> is _usually_ available on-tap, and diesel _never_ is make diesel
> preferable?

As noted by other posters, natural gas often goes out at the same times as
electricity in some areas (e.g. California).  In fact, many power companies
use natural gas to generate electricity.

Relying on one public utility to supplant another is not logical unless
either you have historical data to satisfy you that outages in one are
rarely linked to the other, or you can store natural gas onsite to run "long
enough" and only need the utility to refill later.

S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking