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We Need A Power Outage Website

Members of the ISP-Tech list share ideas for checking on the power status of a remote location, although few discussion thread respondents forsee any money in the service.

[July 19, 2002]

On the ISP-Tech list in June, GN asked,

"Does anyone know of a website that lists cities that have power outages? I've been hunting, but haven't found anything. It would be helpful when we're monitoring remote sites and suddenly see them drop."

A number of respondents suggested that such a site could be a great service:

[JL enthused] "What you're describing would be a value added service capable of generating significant revenue for any of the major POP networks. They'd simply need to install a communications-capable power monitor at any of the hundreds of POP locations they maintain around the nation, each capable of being remotely queried periodically by a master server, which could then create current charts and graphs showing power grid reliability in each of those locations."

[JP added] "UPSes often have cables which notify a computer that power has gone out. We do this, and we have the computer e-mail my pager when that happens. The APC software can also dial a modem for traditional paging or running other commands. Nothing more is really needed. I have also hooked an APC up to a Portmaster 2, and set up a serial link over TCP/IP to a remote computer with the APC software on it. It's only 1200 or 2400 bps, and it doesn't send anything unless there is an event, or it's logging conditions."

MR warned that putting together a comprehensive database would be a major undertaking:

"It would be difficult to create. Because the power utilities consists of grids within grids, you would have to monitor each minute grid. Within a single city, there are probably a dozen or so power blips a day: multiply those by how many cities exist, in addition to other areas, and you have a huge database that not a whole lot of people would be interested in. If you developed it, I'm sure you could sell to customers who need to monitor power at remote sites, but it would be hard to do."

Others noted that simpler versions of the concept do already exist:

[MS offered] "Opto 22 describes a setup like this for things like store locations or vending machines here."

[JP added] "In my area, the power company lists outages by region, town, and street when there is an outage. We can sit at work and check to see if power is on at home."

—End