By JACKSON WANG
Executive Editor
The College of Saint Rose was partially shut down late Saturday night into early Sunday morning to fix a broken switch to the generator. This was the second attempt in a week that The College tried to fix the defective switch.
Six buildings on campus including Albertus Hall, Saint Joseph Hall, the Events and Athletics Center, Alumni Hall, Lima Hall, and the facilities buildings, were all completely shutdown with no power for a few hours early Thursday and Sunday morning, according to Dennis McDonald, vice president for student affairs.
Also, The College’s network operating center was shut down, which meant that Blackboard, e-mail, printing, computer logins, Banner, Internet access, the College’s website, any other network-based systems were unavailable.
This all occured after a tree fell on Hudson Avenue on the morning of Oct. 19 due to strong winds, and interrupted the National Grid utility power for Saint Rose and surrounding neighborhoods, said assistant vice president for facilities John Bryant.
Many students and local residents were without power for several hours that morning.
During that power outage, The College was required to use a 2-megawatt generator that provides standby electrical power to five of the major college buildings- Albertus Hall, Saint Joseph’s Hall, the Events and Athletics Center, Alumni Hall, Lima Hall, and the facilities buildings, according to Bryant. Some buildings had individual generators, which were used during those few hours.
Bryant said the backup generators were able to fire up right away because of the electrical switch gear called automatic transfer switch. When the machine senses utility power is lost, it switches over to generator power. Then, when power gets restored, it switches back from generator to utility.
But that wasn’t the case last Saturday.
“Unfortunately, Saturday morning the (automatic transfer switch) failed to switch back from generator power to the utility, and these six buildings have been running on standby generator power (from Saturday to Sunday morning),” said Bryant.
In order to have the problem fixed, a power shutdown was required to place the controller portion of the automatic transfer switch.
“The power must be shut down so that it is safe for electricians to work on this high-voltage equipment,” said Bryant, who supervised the first attempted repairs that occurred late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, which were unsuccessful.
Instead of making a second attempt at repairing the broken switch, Bryant said they performed a temporary fix that should last until Thanksgiving break, which is when The College will replaced the old automatic transfer switch with a new unit. The switch is located between the Events and Athletics Center and the Neil Hellman Library.
During the attempted repairs, several campus buildings were requested to be completely shut down, including two residential halls, Lima and Alumni. Residents of both buildings received an email from area coordinator Julianna Hart on Tuesday in order to be prepared for the power outage from 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. Thursday morning, and 12a.m. to 4a.m. Sunday morning.
In the email, Hart asked residents to shutdown computers prior to 11:30 p.m., limit travel through the hallways unless to the restrooms, retrieve flashlights from resident assistants, charge phones and alarms prior to power down, and refrain from doing laundry after 10 p.m. that night.
Last year, Brubacher Hall lost power after two of building’s three electrical feeds from a National Grid pole had stopped functioning. Residents were then asked to exit the building and only return to pick up essential needs. Brubacher Hall was closed for the night and residents were asked to travel home, if nearby, stay with friends in other dorms or apartments, or at last resort, sleep in the Events and Athletics Center.
But residents in Lima and Alumni Hall were allowed to stay in their dorms during the two power outages, which had extra security guards stationed at the entrances of both buildings that only allowed access to Saint Rose students with valid identification.
Along with the building power outages, all college network services were down from 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night to 7 a.m. Thursday morning, and then again from 11 p.m. Saturday night to 9 a.m. Sunday morning. The Network Operations Center is located in Saint Joseph’s Hall, where power was turned off during the shutdown, Bryant said.
“The Network Operations Center is equipped with a backup battery system, which provides power during short outages, but this shutdown may last longer than the battery backup system is capable of covering,” said Bryant. “Therefore, the network must be shut down in a controlled manner so as to prevent systems from going down suddenly, which would occur if power were cut abruptly.”
John Ellis, executive director information technology services, said there are no technology related reasons for the network shutdown.
“The main impact is that due to the size and complexity of the network, including Banner, Blackboard, e-mail, printing, wireless, etc.,” said Ellis. “It takes about one hour to bring the network down and then at least three hours or more to bring the network back up mostly due to interdependencies between the various systems.”
All networks were back up and running Thursday and Sunday morning by the promised times.
If The College ever has to shut down again, Bryant said they’re going to try to complete repairs during breaks when residential halls are closed. But there is a chance the electrical repairs could be done while Saint Rose is in session, said Bryant.
Bryant said it was unfortunate that The College was experiencing difficulties with a portion of their standby power system, but “we consider ourselves fortunate to have the capability the standby power system affords us. Without it, when utility power is interrupted, our buildings would simply lose power.”
