The brains of British Columbia's vast electricity transmission grid is a row of two-metre-high computer racks in a high-tech, ultra-secure facility in the Fraser Valley. The room feels cool and dry, and it's quiet here. This is the guts of the new grid control centre that BC Transmission Corp. is entrusting to ensure smooth and steady delivery of power in the coming decades to 1.7 million BC Hydro customers, their hospitals, schools, businesses, industries, streetlights, and homes. A man steps up to one of the racks, places his hands on it, and gives it a really rough, vigorous shake. The rack rocks back and forth but its movement is controlled as it would be in an earthquake, because it rests on a ball-bearing-loaded floor plate that safely disperses the energy released in a quake. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling stay on."That system is live right now," says Bruce Barrett, BCTC vice-president for major projects, during a tour of the facility with a Vancouver Sun reporter and photographer. "We expect that if an earthquake happens, it will not take the computer down."It was built to a one-in-10,000-year earthquake standard, adds Martin Huang, BCTC vice-president for systems operation. "So if anything in the Lower Mainland should disappear, this facility should still be standing."
As the tour progressed, it became clear that BCTC has established about a dozen layers of backup support in the event of a disaster that might knock out conventional power supply. There are 50 computer racks. Each runs blackout simulation every two minutes. And if it sniffs out a problem, it moves to fix it. If a computer crashes, another takes over, then another, and so on. Digital microwave and fibre-optic communications systems keep it connected at all times to 260 substations across B.C. In the event of a sudden power failure, a 480-volt battery the size of a typical living room takes over to keep the system alive without interruption. If it should fail, there's even a second battery.Next, there's a diesel generator, and a backup diesel in another part of the facility -- and a week's worth of fuel in case there's a delay in restoring outside power.
That's just half the story.
"We do have another facility almost like this one in the Okanagan. If something [catastrophic] happened in the Lower Mainland, we could operate the grid from the Okanagan with a very minimal staff," says Huang, the on-site boss of this 150-person operation. Like the Fraser Valley facility, the one in the Okanagan has two giant batteries and two diesel generators as backup. Taxpayers take note. This control centre, and the one in the Okanagan, were built on time and on budget for a total of $130 million.
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