North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Why do we use facilities with EPO's?

  • From: John Curran
  • Date: Wed Jul 25 16:07:06 2007 
At 12:07 PM -0400 7/25/07, Leo Bicknell wrote:

>The more "urban" an area the more likely it is to have strict fire
>codes.  Typically these codes require a single EPO for the entire
>structure, there's no way to compartmentalize to rooms or subsystems.

For high-availability sites (Tier III, Tier IV per UpTime Institute), EPO's are
one of the most common reasons for outage.  I'd highly recommend APC's
paper <http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/ASTE-5T3TTT_R2_EN.pdf>
on the topic.

Short-version is that its a safety issue for room occupants and responders.
More mature codes tend to require such, particularly in the presence of
UPS gear which can be energized unbeknownst to fire fighting personnel.
If you don't have water-based fire suppression, have normally unoccupied
spaces, and are continuously manned, it's sometimes possible to pass on
having an EPO.  YMMV by inspector.

/John