New cables decrease odds of summer blackouts

The University is confident that it will remain fully powered during the summer session, unlike last summer in which a major power failure caused damage to equipment and scientific samples all over campus.

According to Ron Esposito, director of Facilities, there always remains a chance of regional power outages like the one last summer, but the University is taking precautions to ensure that they are prepared to handle any power outages.

Six blackouts occurred in July 2002, when two major Massachusetts Electric underground cables failed at the same time, leaving Medford and Tufts without power.

Although built-in emergency generators in Barnum Hall and other buildings temporarily protected laboratories containing temperature-sensitive experiments, prolonged outages drained the generators and allowed temperatures to rise to damaging levels.

"The failure of both cables was most likely due to age and fatigue" Esposito said. Massachusetts Electric never gave Tufts a definite conclusion on the reason for the failure.

Since then, the two original cables have been replaced and a third new cable running from a different power station -- supplying power solely to Tufts -- was installed. The addition of the third cable should promise power regularity during the summer.

Even with three cables servicing Tufts, Esposito explained that the severe power outages of last summer gave Facilities a "loss of faith and trust" in the general security of supplied power.

Due to this, plans are in the works to purchase additional generators in case another power outage occurs. These generators would be trailer mounted, which means that they would be transportable to the buildings that needed power the most, such as the Dana Biology Laboratory, Michael Research Chemistry Laboratory, and Tisch Library -- the main station of telephone circuiting on campus.

These generators will most likely be purchased before students return for the fall semester.

The main reason behind the delay in purchasing the new generators is the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act, which restricts the emission of products of combustion into the air to 50 tons for a given area.

These products of combustion include nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide, both of which are emitted by the generators currently used on-campus. An increase in generator use could lead to an increase in combustion products past the 50-ton limit.

If the limit is exceeded, Facilities would have to make adjustments in other machinery, such as the boilers, to accommodate for the increase in emissions.

Tufts faces a trade-off between minimizing capital expenditure by keeping the current number of generators or purchasing more generators and preparing for the unlikely case that another regional outage will occur, Esposito said.

Associate Professor of biology Ross Feldberg expressed his frustration with the administration for the late action in solving this problem. "We have had power failures in the past, I would guess one every six months or so on average," Feldberg said. "Our department informed the administration of the impact of each of these power outages, yet the University never pressed the local power company on what it was doing to avoid such failures."

Karen Panetta, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science placed more blame on the minimal system staff last summer for the lack of back-up support for computer hard drives, where all computer data is stored.

Panetta is not worried about this problem reoccurring due to the increase of support staff. This summer, Tufts will have increased activity with research laboratory workers, students in summer session, and the Summer Conference Bureau guests on campus.

Three new cables supplying power to the campus will hopefully be sufficient. If not, Esposito assured that Facilities will be able to deal with the problem using rental generators, similar to last summer. But because of Tufts' experience with the process, he said that they will be able to respond more effectively and faster than previously.