Campus Power Outage
Plan Ahead
Be Prepared
Southern California Edison will be working on the electrical supply lines to campus. This will effect all buildings and locations at UCSB.
OUTAGE WILL CAUSE ELECTRICAL SURGES
In order to protect your electronic equipment, office computers, lab equipment and other devices, each office and lab in Broida Hall should have a shutdown plan for their equipment in place before leaving for the weekend. The shutdown involves a huge electrical load, so the shutdown and restart will potentially generate electrical surges that may damage equipment. You should plan to shut off uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes) and unplug sensitive equipment from outlets.
BROIDA HALL STANDBY GENERATOR
The Broida Hall standby generator is expected to start and run through the outage after a brief lapse. Only equipment plugged into outlets designated "Emergency" will continue to run during the outage. Most office spaces in Broida do NOT have emergency outlets. Equipment that will remain on, connected through an UPS unit, should have the UPS unit tested ahead of time. Order and replace batteries as soon as possible, as shipping these items takes some time.
BROIDA HALL NETWORK AND SERVERS
The Broida Hall network and key servers are on UPSes and on the emergency circuits. The network and servers are expected to remain running through the outage. Phones in Broida Hall might not work due to the power outage, please have your cellphone handy for emergency. Trailers 937, 939 and 942 are NOT on emergency generators. Those network connections and phones will lose power during the campus outage, and will go down. Additionally, the switch serving room 1015 is not on standby power, and Broida 1015 will lose network access.
CAMPUS NETWORK IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN UP
Campus network connections to Broida are expected to remain up. However, as many key campus network connections are in buildings without standby generators, recent improvements in campus network power supplies are untested, and its resistance to outages remains to be seen.
THOSE WORKING THROUGH TILL THE LAST MINUTES NEED TO SHUT DOWN THEIR SYSTEMS
If you plan to work with your systems till the last minute, be sure to turn off the computer, printers, monitors and all the UPS units before you leave. Repeated deep-cycling of UPS batteries shortens their life. Only critical systems plugged into the designated standby (generator) power outlets should remain on.
SCHEDULED SHUTDOWNS
Physics Computing Services (PCS) is scheduled to shutdown systems the last business day before the planned shutdown time. This includes undergrad and grad instructional computer systems (like the PSR and conference rooms) and working with department staff to assure department owned computers are protected. This effort will begin at noon, and continue until the department closes.
If you forget to turn off your office system before leaving for the weekend, you can contact PCS by e-mail at pcs@physics.ucsb.edu before noon on the planned shutdown day, and we can assist in shutting down your computer systems.
PCS is not available after 5:00pm, nor are they available on Holidays, Saturday or Sunday to shut your systems off or on. Please do not request "turn my system off last", as we will work through the floors in order, and do not have the time to backtrack. PCS will not be entering labs to shutdown systems. Please have your research staff and graduate students prepare your labs for the power outage.
TURNING MACHINES BACK ON
If you wish to have PCS restart your systems on Monday morning, send an e-mail to pcs@physics.ucsb.edu and they will attempt to restart your computer systems.