The great new data center was sitting less than half a mile than an electric substation, where the fire entered the Heathrow Airport last week in Mrak. The power of the data center data was also interrupted that day. But no one who relied on it would have noticed it, thanks to the bank of batteries and security generators intended immediately to kill.
Meanwhile, officials at the most prominent airport in Europe, close to 6 pm, to get their terminals and runways back into operation, causing global delays and underwent the vulnerability of British infrastructure.
It is a striking contrast that says energy experts can be explained to a large extent with one word: money.
“The data center industry is relatively young. They are more adapted to the cost of catastrophic failure,” said Simon Gallagher, director of UK Networks Services, who advises clients about the resistance of their electric networks. He said that most of the world’s airports – including Heathrow – were not ready to invest large investments needed to build total security systems.
Even at the airport, the size of Heathrow, described by officials as equivalent to the use of energy in a small town, can be created by safety systems enough to maintain normal operations during a catastrophic energy disappearance, said Mr. Gallagher and other engineering experts.
But that could cost as much as $ 100 million and it will probably take years to be established. So far, most airports have decided not to invest the investment.
“That comes down to cost analysis and benefits,” said Mr. Gallagher. “In an instant, there seems to be an assumption that it will cost too much.”
Airport
Heathrow officials quickly pointed out after the incident on Friday that the airport has backup power for its most critical systems: runway lights and traffic control systems. If the plane was supposed to land that day, it could have done it safe.
But the airport did not have a way to attack the rest of the extended and complicated facility: huge terminals, filled with stores and restaurants, moving promenades and moving stairs. Cut off the net, there was no power to move the bags to the request area or for tickets or bathrooms.
First open at the end of World War II, Heathrow has been expanded and updated over a decade. The result was patchwork of older and newer electric cables and systems that carry increasing energy for energy.
“The grid is old,” said the Najdin Meshkati, a professor of engineering at the University of Southern California. “For the aviation, for the network and for other security critical systems, the elderly become more important maintenance.”
What Heathrow has no spare generators that could supply 40 megawatts of power needed at the time of the top to maintain normal operations.
Instead, on Friday, engineers at the airport had to manually configure switches in another substation to temporarily redirect the accessible power of Heathrow. This took hours, and since the airport systems were sitting without electricity, it took more time to lift them back, followed by circles of testing.
Substation
The primary source of power supply is Hyde North Testanica about a mile, owned and managed by National Grid Electricy Transmission, a private energy company responsible for the area.
Two transformers of the substation were taken out of the fire from the fire. The cause is still under investigation, but police said on Tuesday that they had not found “no evidence” of suspicious activity.
John Pettigrow, executive director of National Grid, told the Financial Times that there is no “lack of capacity” in the area after the fire. Energy experts have said that this is true: places where there is a real lack of power are usually countries in development and war zones.
The challenge, however, was to exploit the abundant power after Heathrow’s connection with Hyde North was interrupted. Thomas Woldbye, Executive Director of the Airport, told the BBC that he was proud of the employees who worked on Friday to transfer their systems to use strength from two nearby tenants.
But he said Heathrow would now evaluate whether he would install a “different level of resistance if we can’t believe the network around us is working the way we should.” Heathrow did not respond to the comment on this story.
Data center
Airport leaders might want to examine their corporate neighbor in the north.
The Union Park data facility operated by ARK data centers, a six-minute walk from Hyde North North substation. Inside, computers last 24 hours a day, pow the cloud services and artificial intelligence that are at the center of modern banking, trade, research and government operations.
Huw Owen, the company’s executive, said her electrical supply was interrupted when the fire broke out. But sophisticated sensors discovered the loss of strength and immediately switched to batteries that act like a continuous power computer power system. This gave the facility generators time to finish, and they soon took over.
“It’s a well -convinced, familiar process,” Mr. Owen said in an interview. “It is the resistance and maintenance of everything that is all impressed, is absolutely ahead and the center of our world.” Mr. Owen said the company had installed a set of a generator backup system, despite his expectations that he might not need to be needed. AND Allowing the application Prepared for the company in December, she described the possibility of interrupting electricity as “extremely rare”.
“This would require a catastrophic regional failure on the network or supply power plant, and would probably influence not only the place but also the surrounding area of London,” notes the abstract. “As a result, the network connection is considered very reliable that it was shown in the letter of reliability of the network provided (calculated as 99,9,999605%).”
Decision
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said BBC After the fire, “I don’t want to see the airport as important as Heathrow lowered the way he did it on Friday.”
But how to avoid it in the future?
The challenge in the production of electric upgrades to places like Heathrow is a determination of how to pay it when high energy costs progress with consumer budgets. In the past, investments at the airport are often transferred to customers in the form of higher ticket prices on airplanes.
Mr. Gallagher, an electric network resistance counselor, noted that new airports in places like Dubai were built with the type of backups that could keep the terminals open. And several older airports, such as Schiphol in Amsterdam, upgraded their facilities with large generators.
But if Heathrow’s administration wants to follow that, the experts say, they will have to accept that it requires a large investment in order to prevent a crisis that may not be repeated for many years.
“It is a lot easier to build it from the first day than to try and make up for things,” Mr Owen said about Heathrow and other old airports. “They are capable of stimulating resistance to these web locations as I am, but they will now have to be installed in advance, while I have built it from 1 day.”
