31–40 of 436 posts
Mobile networks should of course be classified as critical infrastructure, and thus be exempt from any rolling blackouts.
I strongly strongly doubt that critical emergency call infrastructure will be blacked out before literally anything else. Even when massive ice buildup took down a whole region's power grid in my home EU country, mobile cell towers were the first to be kept up and brought online to allow emergency services and citizens to communicate. This feels like a nothing burger from Reuters (which is publishing some seriously d…
Indeed, they will just black out together with everything else. They are generally not on separate distribution circuits. They do have some limited backup power though.
I can see smaller network operators save money on backups, but major monopolies usually don't have a choice in this manner.
So I wonder which regions don't do that?
Imagine using easily expendable and non-renewable resources, subjecting the very processes our civilization is sustained by to a great risk of failure while having an almost inexhaustible source of energy that was invented more than 50 years ago. Surely that would be a madness and no reasonable organization would do this, right?
My first thought was actually that this was concerning EMP or radiological issues if Putin goes nuclear.
The top priority for keeping power on goes to grid segments with life-sustaining equipment. If you live within a grid segment that also powers a hospital you will likely not be subject to load shedding.
I've been in South Africa for the last month, which has had an energy crisis since around 2007 and somehow they manage to keep mobile networks up during load shedding. There are 2:30 hour (sometimes 4:30 hour) blackouts daily and yet everything seems to keep chugging along. Mobile towers are probably have some of the highest electricity:benefit ratios out there, it would be silly to not prioritize them.
The less reliable the grid, the more backup power is planned into infrastructure like cell towers. In Europe the grid has historically been quite reliable, so backup options are likely more limited at these sites.
A few years ago, we had a bigger 6h or so power outage, all the stores had to throw tons of products away because there was literally no redundant power supply at all. It was my 2nd power outage in Germany in over 30 years.
Imagine using easily expendable and non-renewable resources, subjecting the very processes our civilization is sustained by to a great risk of failure while having an almost inexhaustible source of energy that was invented more than 50 years ago. Surely that would be a madness and no reasonable organization would do this, right?
I’m unclear. Uranium is fine. But it’s totally exhaust-able.
Mobile networks should of course be classified as critical infrastructure, and thus be exempt from any rolling blackouts.
I've been in South Africa for the last month, which has had an energy crisis since around 2007 and somehow they manage to keep mobile networks up during load shedding. There are 2:30 hour (sometimes 4:30 hour) blackouts daily and yet everything seems to keep chugging along. Mobile towers are probably have some of the highest electricity:benefit ratios out there, it would be silly to not prioritize them.
The less reliable the grid, the more backup power is planned into infrastructure like cell towers. In Europe the grid has historically been quite reliable, so backup options are likely more limited at these sites.