Lights out

The dog days of summer bit early this year. In late June, the deep South experienced a record heat wave lasting nearly three weeks, and most of the Midwest already had suffered through a handful of 90 degrees days.

While early heat waves are nothing out of the ordinary for summer, this most recent round of sticky weather left people particularly uneasy. As they stayed indoors and cranked up their air conditioning, many were more concerned than ever about the potential for power outages related to overloads on regional electrical grids.

This growing uneasiness results from the fact that the $210 billion electric utility industry is undergoing a deregulation process similar to that of the telecommunications industry. The long-awaited regulatory shake-up will result in better prices and more choices for users, but it also raises questions about how well the deregulated utilities will able to manage already inconsistent power quality. Among the increasingly prevalent electric service disruptions was a highly publicized outage in the Western U.S. last year that left portions of several states without power for as long as 12 hours.

Maintaining quality, of course, has been a concern of the electric utility industry. Most utilities have implemented their own quality control programs, and several industry agencies-most notably the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC)-are closely tracking service outages and outage causes, as well as frequently assessing overall reliability.

However, as the electric industry deregulates, cost-cutting, the rise of new competition and a fracturing of regulatory responsibility for the industry have put quality maintenance in a precarious position.

"Maintenance of the electrical grid has been behind the business expectations of the system," says Robert Graham, chairman of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions' Protection Engineers Group and also a senior engineer at Pacific Telecom's Century Telephone unit in Vancouver, Wash.

Historically, electric power supply has been managed under a practice known as generation reserve. Utilities typically held about 20% of generated power in a reserve margin, and they accessed that reserve power when outages and other emergency situations occurred. This meant that users often weren't affected by outages for very long, if at all. Reliability was at a high point.

However, because utilities maintained a constant reserve margin of 20%, a large amount of generated power was going unused during non-peak usage and non-emergency periods. That kind of surplus was a revenue opportunity waiting to happen, especially as utilities were gradually being pushed to lower prices and cut operating costs in the face of emerging deregulation and new competition. In fact, similar to telecom's model of leasing excess capacity to resellers, incumbent utilities saw a chance to sell their surplus power to newer companies as a way of generating new revenue.

An unfortunate result of this practice is that enough surplus power might not be available when electric companies need it most. Some press reports have indicated that over-committed power reserves had something to do with last year's outage in the Western U.S. and other similar outages.

In the telecom industry, power fluctuations and inconsistencies have become a natural element of operating networks. Carriers have come to expect that they will see occasional unstable events, such as transient spikes, surges and dips, and that these events will challenge them to closely monitor and manage power levels so that their own end users don't experience disruptions.

"Ultimately, they don't have control of the [electrical] grid, so having adequate backup becomes important," says Tim Simonson, director of strategic marketing at American Power Conversion.

"This makes the need for protection and monitoring constant, says Mike Burkhalter, vice president of marketing at Lucas Controls.

The current environment has given rise to industry groups such as ATIS' PEG to further study the effects of utility deregulation, conduct industry-wide power quality audits, discuss common power protection problems and assess potential solutions.

However, the challenge of doing their part to maintain power quality may become more difficult for carriers as the effect of telecom industry deregulation continues to broadside them.

As in the electric industry, telcos that once held monopolies have had to gut themselves of excessive operational costs over the last few years. They have accomplished this through layoffs and attrition of employees with years of technology experience in power supply and other areas.

Carriers also have curbed investment in expensive new technology and have sought to squeeze every last drop of value from the older equipment deployed in their networks. The end result is that smaller, less experienced technical staffs are stretching themselves thin to manage equipment configurations that are increasingly likely to have wear-and-tear problems.

When added to the unpredictable power problems at the hands of electric utilities, the whole thing sounds like a recipe for disaster, and it could be if both the electric industry and the telecom industry fail to become more active about ensuring reliability.

With utility deregulation, telecom carriers now can force their power companies to provide better customer service and maintain consistent quality records. The punishment for not doing so? Carriers can take their sizable electric accounts elsewhere or can split their business between two or more power suppliers, depending on how their networks are geographically related.

"Overall, the electric industry will find the same thing that telcos are finding from deregulation," says Graham.

In the telecom industry, end users have not been shy about employing such leverage against carriers. Their desire to have more control over the reliability of their services gave rise to the development of service level agreements and other guarantees under which carriers must provide certain levels of quality service.

Such guarantees have not been put to use in the electric industry. Some utilities have started to formulate service plans with varying levels of service quality-discounts are offered to customers that can endure occasional off-peak outages or low availability-but such plans are unthinkable for utilities' telco clients.

In addition, telecom carriers should increase investment in management offerings that can help them actively control the power distribution throughout their networks. For instance, a handful of Web-based power quality management products are now available that can effectively help short-handed network operators control and manage their power supplies (see sidebar).

Many newer carriers in the telecom industry have not had the time or inclination to educate themselves about power quality issues. These carriers often count on their core infrastructure providers to handle their power supply needs and may not be aware of how sensitive an issue power quality really is.

"A lot of them have to be educated about what they really need, and if they don't, it could hurt them," says Ron Pitt, vice president of marketing at Exide Electronics. Still, no matter how progressively carriers handle power quality, a disorganized electric utility industry may be its worst enemy.

While they have been forced to cut prices and compete fiercely for each dollar, electric companies also have discovered that deregulation allows them to pursue new business opportunities.

They can buy other utilities or pursue business ventures in different regions unfettered by rules that once kept them from doing so. Some have even taken advantage of the simultaneous telecom deregulation to pursue competitive interests in this industry.

Lost in all the activity, however, is any profound effort to maintain service reliability within the utility industry. From its base in Princeton, N.J., NERC is trying to change that by encouraging more of an industry focus on reliability. The agency's outage reports and reliability assessments are published on its Web site at www.nerc.com.

Also, NERC has encouraged better planning by electric companies as they lease power reserves, as well as comprehensive planning for future power needs.

In the past, electric utilities, their vendors, consumer interest groups and large industrial customers have failed to cooperate on creating such well-intentioned plans, but a more organized approach is critical, according to Mike Gent, president of NERC.

The past lack of cooperation has left the utility industry with a dearth of industrywide standards and overlapping management concepts-something like a utility version of telecom's Telecommunications Management Network framework, for example.

But, NERC and others are pushing for more standardization, too.

"To make the market work efficiently, information on the status of the bulk electric system has to be available to all participants," says Gent, in a recent address emphasizing the need for an industry standards framework. NERC is helping endorse a transaction management system concept that will help, he says.

However, the bottom line for the telecom industry is that power reliability may remain elusive in the short term. Telcos can expect more frequent outages, sporadic surges and perhaps even scheduled outages during off-peak hours as utilities struggle to manage loads.

It is a humid evening in late June, and portions of Chicago's north side have been dark for three hours. Maybe it is not all that much of a surprise after two consecutive 90 degrees days. The electric company has said power will be back on anytime now. We're waiting.

Increasing concerns over power quality may be controllable with rapidly advancing management technologies. As voice, data and video networks converge behind the force of new solutions, new options for managing network power systems are also evolving.

Uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) were once only batteries-in-a-box, managed physically on-site, that later migrated to incorporate relatively basic contact closure alert capabilities. Recent developments led to server interface software for management and graceful shutdown, and even more recently to the integration of remote and sophisticated simple network management protocol capabilities.

Although each of these chronological developments in power management and control have increased the reliability of the system while simultaneously lowering the cost of ownership, converging technologies have created even more opportunity for improved management.

The newest technology innovation in UPS management is Web-based reporting and control. Leading vendors are shipping solutions that use Web technology as the management interface to power systems.

Web-based management has three primary benefits. First, the ubiquitous nature of the Web and Web browsers allows network managers or facilities engineers to access information on their power systems and operating environment from almost anywhere, at any time. All that is needed is basic Web access and a common, everyday browser (plus your password).

Second, Web-based management solutions are platform-independent. In terms of operating systems or management interface platforms, once the Web management solution is running, it shouldn't matter what type of operating system it's running on.

Again, the common denominator is the trusty Web browser and password. Carrier personnel could be around the corner, around the world, or at home, and still have full access to the UPS.

Finally, state-of-the-art Web-based power management solutions have the option of intelligently interfacing with the manufacturer's data center to diagnose performance issues throughout the system's lifecycle. For example, if an enhanced version of the Web-based software is released, the manufacturer's server can alert the network manager that the latest code is available for download and installation.

Even more significantly, when it is time to swap out batteries, the manufacturer's server can alert the user to the need for service-before it becomes a problem. With Web-based management, whether a user is under a service contract or providing self-maintenance, the manufacturer's server can download information to the manager, offering the correct part number for the new batteries needed. This reduces the number of costly site visits and phone calls, and it reduces the total cost of ownership of the infrastructure or distributed power systems.

Two sets of Web-based technology are on the market today: proxy systems and embedded systems. In the proxy scenario, Web software is loaded on a server and uses the power monitoring software running on the server to provide the data to the Web interface. A server connected to a UPS is needed to install and operate the proxy version.

Proxy systems employ agents that allow Web server administrators to easily and remotely monitor all their server-based UPSs, regardless of their operating system, via a Web browser. Companies that have remote locations or traveling administrators benefit because network management can be simply and securely implemented from a Web browser and single user resource location.

Alternatively, embedded Web technology in the UPS allows for direct contact between the UPS and Web browser. No host device is needed. This is ideal for managing points of presence deployed in remote unmanned locations.

Embedded technology allows managers to control power to the individual outlets of a remote system via their Web browsers. It is an ideal solution for rebooting hung equipment.

Web-based management technology makes good business sense for organizations that have remote network locations, lean staffing, multiple network platforms, and various technologies and protocols in the field. By creating a smart power infrastructure, carriers can increase the network availability while simultaneously lowering the cost of operation.