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Does the NSA Need More Electricity?
An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore sun (NSA watchers can't live without it) reports that the NSA worries about overloading the Baltimore energy grid if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ. This includes two multi million dollar supercomputers. Some systems are reportedly not getting the cooling they need. The temperature in NSA buildings is raised two degrees to conserve energy, according to the article. The NSA is Baltimore Gas and Electric`s (BGE) biggest customer the sun reports. Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage. The NSA does apparently not have the backup power generation capacity to power the whole facility during power outages. Some point a finger at a new mall build in the area, but a BGE spokesman says the mall is "fairly easily accommodated". Some sources say the problem was identified in the late 90`s. But "keeping the lights on" wasn't a priority. A $4 million computer upgrade to the system that allocates power was postponed for budgetary reasons. (the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion) The article reports that the budget documents for listening posts around the world report similar infrastructural problems, in the budgets for 07 as well as previous years. It should be noted that the huge "groundbreaker" IT infrastructure upgrade program is reportedly over budget and late, but not yet fully operational."
"You've got an awfully big computer plant and a lot of precision equipment, and I don't think they would handle power surges and the like really well," -- WTF?
I've worked on several jobs for credit card companies, as an example, an office with 4,000 workstations. The power was connected to the electric company's grid in two different places from two different substations; in case one of the substations went out, the whole building could be handled from the one still going. All of the servers and almost all of the workstations were connected to a UPS with 15 minutes of batteries AND an emergency generator with 24-hours of fuel. About half of the non-computer loads, including elevators, emergency lights, sump pumps, 1/3 of the occupants air-conditioning, all of the A/C for the server rooms, etc. were connected to the emergency generators. Even the refrigerators and freezers in the cafeteria were on emergency power. And this was for a call center. But a facility upon which our national security supposedly depends can't handle power surges?
The City of Toronto is already using such a system. Here is the link:
l ing.htm
http://www.toronto.ca/environment/initiatives/coo
Just to quote a snippet from the page:
"Enwave Energy Corporation, through partial financial backing from the City of Toronto as one of the two shareholders of Enwave, developed the Deep Lake Water Cooling system that uses the cool energy in cold water to air-condition high-rise buildings in downtown Toronto. The system benefits the City by:
* reducing energy consumption by up to 90 per cent (compared to conventional chillers)
* reducing carbon dioxide emissions
* improving the water supply by using new intake pipes that are deeper
* investing in a corporation in which the City is a shareholder
Enwave's three intake pipes draw water (4 degrees Celsius) from 5 kilometres off the shore of Lake Ontario at a depth of 83 metres below the surface. Naturally cold water makes its way to the City's John Street Pumping Station. There, heat exchangers facilitate the energy transfer between the icy cold lake water and the Enwave closed chilled water supply loop.
The water drawn from the lake continues on its regular route through the John Street Pumping Station for normal distribution into the City water supply. Enwave uses only the coldness from the lake water, not the actual water, to provide the alternative to conventional air-conditioning.
Additional data found on the page (such as savings in energy (precise figures for Metro Hall in toronto) and other stuff. Enjoy.
Erik