17 September 2012 - Power Supply Update
Posted 2258 Mon 17 Sep 2012
The electrician has completed his work at the farm and we transferred back on to our normal power feed at about 2005. The battery backup will remain in place as a permanent feature to mitigate against loss of sevice during future mains power failures.
14/15 September 2012 - Complete service outage
Posted 1430 Sat 15 Sep 2012
Between 0830 on 14/9/12 and 1300 on 15/9/12 there were long periods when no internet service was available. This was due to un-notified electrical work taking place at a farm site that we use to relay our broadband signal. It transpires that during a thunderstorm in August, a lightning strike caused damage to a fusebox at the farm and at the time a temporary repair was carried out. On 14/9/12 an electrician was on site to make a permanent repair and whist doing his work he had to turn off the supply to our equipment. It was expected that this would only be for short periods at a time and indeed there was an intermittant service throughout the day on the 14th.
However the work was more involved than at first thought. So much so, that it became clear that the electrician was going to have to leave the power off all weekend. And so at 1654 on the 14th the power was disconnected one last time. Unfortunately at this stage our engineers were 50 miles away. However at 2200 a battery backup was installed and service was restored. This provided power until 0140 on the 15th when the batteries ran out. On the morning of the 15th our own engineers worked on getting an alternative mains supply (generators are only a last ditch option at this site) and this was connected at 1230 when full service was restored. Currently the system is running on this alternative supply with a battery backup in place that will keep it going for a few hours if the mains is cut again.
We are advised that the electrician is onsite again on Monday 17/9/12 to complete his repairs and restore us to our normal supply. It is envisaged that as the battery backup is now in place there will be no further major disruptions. There will be a small outage of a few minutes when we are swithced back to the main supply, but that should be all.