Power Outage Darkens Annenberg, Science Center

Annenberg Hall, Loker Commons, the Science Center and other buildings in the area lost power for approximately an hour and a half yesterday afternoon due to an overloaded power line.

The power failure caused the FAS network's core computing systems, which are housed in the Science Center, to go offline. The Unix e-mail servers, network printers and Macintosh lab computers were all inaccessible.

Students dining in Annenberg were forced to navigate their way through the kitchen in the dark.

Water, iced tea and pink lemon drink became the only beverage options as the electronic soda machines fell prey to the lack of power. Even dining hall workers had to improvise when the conveyor belt that normally carries away students' dirty dishes shut down.

According to Kevin Davis `98, coordinator of residential computing for FAS Computer Services, these problems could have been avoided if the FAS network's Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) hadn't failed.

In the case of a power outage, the UPS is supposed to provide energy to FAS computer systems until they switch over to a back-up generator. Yesterday afternoon, a battery malfunction caused the systems to lose power and go offline.

According to FAS Network Operations, the battery failure was unforeseeable. The UPS experiences routine check-ups, during which its batteries are inspected and all of the batteries passed inspection when they were last tested in January.

But only 15 minutes after the power outage began, power had been restored to Annenberg, to the cheers and applause of students. Around that time, Davis said, the first computing services started coming back up.

Several diagnostics tests were run on the systems to ensure that no damage was done when the systems lost power. Davis said the preliminary diagnostics revealed no serious problems, so the systems were brought back online.

Two hours later, all systems were fully operational again.

-Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.