Fears of overheated IT systems and power outages in
France and Europe are lessening this week as temperatures begin to
fall.
France's principal power supplier, Electricité de France,
announced on Monday that no official shutdowns would be necessary
after warning that power cuts were a likely result of several weeks
of high temperatures across the country.
The heatwave in France has caused severe difficulties for the
country's power industry. The majority of France's energy is
produced by nuclear power plants that are kept cool using river
water.
The heat of recent weeks has caused this water to become so warm
that it could no longer be returned to the river immediately after
use without breaking strict environmental laws. Last week, under
threat of losing the country's power supply, the French government
temporarily relaxed those laws.
That decision by the government, together with lower
temperatures across the country and efforts by French industry to
cut power use, has prevented any power blackouts, EDF said in a
statement. However, it cannot rule out accidental power outages as
a result of thunderstorms or other natural incidents.
Not that French hosting companies admit to being concerned.
Datacentre managers have shrugged off the threat of power cuts and
overheated server rooms, insisting they have the resources to cope
with both.
"We were not worried at all," said Eric Matheau, chief
information officer of Bull. Bull houses its own and its customers'
IT systems in its datacentre in Paris.
"We survey the weather all the time, including the temperature
and humidity, and we have two air-conditioning systems where one is
running and the other acts as a back-up," he said. The recent hot
weather saw the temperature in Bull's server room rise by just one
degree, not enough to set off any alerts, Matheau said.
"In terms of continuity of energy, we have independent
generators that can run for several days and we often test them,"
he said.
No experienced IT manager should be caught out by temperature
extremes or power cuts, Matheau added, but even in the smallest
company the IT manager should be prepared for emergencies of this
sort.
Fluxus, owned by BT's Ignite division, runs a large hosting and
managed application service centre in Paris for blue chip companies
including L'Oréal, La Redoute and Aventis. It cannot afford to lose
power and has been designed to cope with both power cuts and
extreme weather, chief executive and chief operations officer Nada
Faycal said.
"Since last Thursday, when Paris was 40 degrees (Celsius), we
tuned the cool air distribution in our datarooms and ran an extra
unit from our two spares. We are now back to normal, running two
cooling units with two spares. This has had no impact on the
platforms," Faycal said.
Fluxus has three uninterruptible power supplies for its power
supply from EDF and two power generators. The UPS will maintain
power for the 50 seconds or so it takes for the generators to start
and the datacentre can then run for several days without refuelling
the generators, Faycal said.
Customers demand that sort of protection, said David Thain,
analyst relations manager at Cable and Wireless. "Some of our
customers stipulate exactly the level of protection they want," he
said. All C&W datacentres have two electricity feeds supported
by UPSs and diesel generators for when things go wrong. The
generators can run for 72 hours.
However, dealing with the heat has not been too much of a
problem for C&W because its datacentre is kept at such a cool
temperature.
The Netherlands also faced possible loss of power as a result
of overheating in its nuclear power stations last week. Like
France, the Dutch government temporarily raised the maximum
temperature of the water returned to its rivers.
"This measure was only taken for one power plant, which raised
in temperature from 30 degrees to 32 degrees," Cor Ruijper,
spokesman for Dutch power company Eneco Holding said on Friday.
"There was a lot of fuss about power cuts but we took steps and
in the end nothing happened. We had to reduce the maximum
electricity supply by 20% to 30% this week, but we do not expect to
have to shut down the power now."
The Daily Express newspaper claimed to have discovered that
the UK was destined for power cuts this winter as a result of low
reserves of energy. However, National Grid Transco spokesman Chris
Mostyn said on Monday that the situation is not as dire as the
paper suggested.
"We said a few months back that our operating margin is slightly
lower than we feel comfortable with. We are not saying there is not
enough, just that we are eating into our safety net. There is
enough generation in the country to match demand," he said.
Even with a lowered operating margin, the UK has 65,000
megawatts of generating capacity and the highest demand at any
point last year was for 54,000 megawatts, Mostyn said.
Gillian Law writes for IDG News
Service