Below is a story from the local CBS affiliate...they are doing some good reporting and are asking the right questions of city leadership. I have been wondering these same questions. The backup systems described in the article linked below make absolutely zero sense to me. Working in commercial construction, I have been a part of many projects for clients who have emergency backup power systems. For the average small business, it's not unusual for IT equipment to be connected only to a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply), which is a battery backup system. A UPS is good because it provides instant backup power through the use of an automatic transfer switch, which instantly "recognizes" power failure from the incoming utility and switches over to the battery power, but it's a limited solution. Depending on the size of the IT equipment and its importance to staying live, sometimes a UPS is the only backup power required and will provide a matter of hours to keep things running. However, for critical equipment, and certainly for equipment that requires a large electrical load such as water treatment facility pumps, I have never in my career seen a battery backup as the only source of emergency power. Anything that is critical infrastructure is always backed up by not only a UPS but also a generator. The standard setup that I am used to seeing is that the UPS will bridge the gap between the power utility failure and the generator firing up and getting to full speed/output. That process is usually short (a couple of minutes or less), so the UPS system is generally only relied on for a short time, and the transfer from UPS power to generator power is almost always automatic and is based on the generator reaching stabilized RPM and output. While I'm sure some systems are designed for manual changeover to generator power, I've never actually seen a system like that, and for the life of me I cannot fathom why something as critical as a water treatment plant would require manual generator changeover. Beyond that, I cannot understand why DPU employees would have waited HOURS to make the switch to generator power, allowing the IT system that runs the power plant to go without power in the process. I can only assume that this is a combined failure of design, leadership, emergency planning, maintenance, and routine testing. If there is a silver lining, I hope it's that Richmond residents will start to wake up and stop accepting failure from city leadership. There are a lot of angry people right now that until recently seemed perfectly happy with the multitude of other failures that Richmond residents have endured for a long time. ** Edited by MP4VT2004 at 1/9/2025, 10:10:24 AM