power

Since November 2001, the US administration has been diverting crude oil supply from the market to the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR), which now stands at a record 700m barrels – in addition to the vast reserves held by the other 25 member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) club of industrialised oil consumers. The government has offered to tap those reserves as an emergency response to the massive supply disruptions caused by Katrina. But the SPR will not be much help. Releasing SPR crude will not offset a looming shortage of natural gas and, given refining constraints, will increase product supply by only a small amount. Its effect on prices will be marginal at best.

Survey shows Business disruptions due to power failure have increased more than 350 percent in just a year

Business continuity specialist SunGard Availability Services said an analysis of customer call-outs revealed that power failures had risen dramatically, accounting for 26 percent of disruptions last year. In 2005 the figure was just 7 percent.

The relatively high proportion of power failures in 2006 compared with the year before may be due to the fact that in 2005, more than a third of business disruption incidents (36 percent) were attributed to terrorism, with bombings in London happening in July that year.

An investigative report issued by the U.S. and Canadian governments surrounding the worst power failure in U.S. history is shedding light on the importance of business continuity planning through findings that the electric-system catastrophe could have been prevented.

Major power failure would leave gas & electricity companies in jeopardy

Most gas and electricity companies rely on commercial mobile phone networks that would stop working in the event of a major power failure. Public mobile networks have limited battery back-up which, once exhausted, would leave engineers working to restore vital utilities unable to communicate.

The situation is not a result of mismanagement on the part of either energy companies or mobile phone network operators, but exposes the need for a high-level overview of interdependencies in the UK utility sector.

Thousands of homes and businesses in central London had to face extended power cuts as temperatures soared in capital at the end of July.

Engineers from the power group EDF worked through the night to restore supply, but the effects of the power outage caused extensive problems for many businesses.

Firms relying on datacentre service providers should beware, after a spate of high-profile outages

Recent power outages at two separate datacentres have highlighted the necessity for firms to implement effective business continuity measures, and for IT managers to be more discerning about their service providers' back-up plans, according to experts. 

On Sunday a datacentre in North London belonging to service provider Level 3 Communications suffered a power cut which lasted around six hours, while in the US, popular social networking site MySpace went down after the same problem affected its Los Angeles datacentre.