They have ten Hitec continuous power units. Each unit has a generator, motor, flywheel, inductive coupling, mechanical clutch, and Diesel engine on the same shaft. There are no batteries or inverters involved. They need eight running units to operate the facility. When utility power failed, four of the ten units failed to start properly. They’re still trying to figure out exactly why. People from Hitec’s Holland HQ, including a member of Hitec’s Board of Directors, are on site.

365 Main reports that utility power didn’t simply fail; there were “4-6 repetitive surges to the facility in a short period of time”. This apparently was mishandled by the Diesel start control system.

This is the second or third serious transformer explosion at the Mission St Substation in the past 5 years.

As for 365main, well, here were our experiences:

In April, 2005 365main had an outage that affected all customers for 50 minutes due to a failed EPO valve. 365 handled that outage spectacularly, claling all of their customers within 15 minutes of the outage.

In February, 2006 365main experienced a partial outage for 3 seconds that only affected some customers, but caused problems in their Telco spine, affecting connectivity.

In October, 2006 365main had a backup generator fail, but supposedly no customers were directly affected, but customers were not allowed to enter the building between 3:29 PM and 4:40 PM.

This isn’t that bad of a track record. Of course, 365main is the most expensive datacenter in California, and you’d expect more.