D/R 301: Put the Cat up on blocks behind the building
After your enterprise has grown up enough to really need electricity all the time, uninterruptable power becomes a necessity.
In the 70’s if you drove through Waltham Massachusetts on Route 128 you could point out the large enterprises. They all had a Cat diesel engine mounted on cinder blocks behind the building, set up to run a generator. You’d put it six feet up on cinder blocks, behind the building so that for example a vehicle in the parking lot wouldn’t have a chance to crash into it. I noticed these because to me a Caterpillar product was a farm tractor sold as far back as the 1930’s (my father sold three rail freight cars full of Cat D-series tractors one season.) They looked quite silly to me, until I realized the IBM 370’s we were using would crash horribly if those Cats weren’t out in the back yard.
My point is that’s an OLD STORY. Check out that “one page tsunami plan” news item on the internet. Look for the AP version here. Check out picture 4 of the TEPCO-released images in the side bar (also below). That’s water gushing into the basement where the dieslel generators for the coastal nuclear power plant were deployed.
Yeah. After the boss buys you a UPS (because you did pass D/R 201), put it somewhere sensible.
