Lessons Learned in the Power Outage of 2011

Whether you’re talking about a flood, hurricane, snow storm, fire, or big earthquake, the same basic principles apply.

Don’t depend on being able to drive. Roads can easily jam when everyone is evacuating simultaneously. Not a good time to take that drive to a remote transmitter site for some unfinished chore.

Don’t depend on cell phones.
Most sites have backup power, but they can depend on good fiber feeds and be easily overwhelmed by unusual usage, and battery backup on some fiber feeds may go out after several hours. If you must communicate, SMS text traffic can often get through when voice traffic cannot.

Maintain your analog radio communications systems.
Your station should have charged handi-talkies available for emergency use, says KGTV’s Andrew Lombard, and if you still have mobile 2-way units, they can be life-savers during emergencies or even for conventional communications to distant sites. “If you don’t have a two-way 450mHz band radio system, get one. Buy it. Lease it. Borrow it. [Then,] keep your 2-way radio system in good running condition!”

Your POTS line may not work in an outage. The old days of battery-floated telephone lines are fading in favor of voice-over-IP systems often delivered by cable companies. Even AT&T delivers phone service over both fiber and copper pairs now.

Test often. Backup generators must be exercised regularly, although your pollution control district can severely limit your opportunities to test diesel units.

Consider solar backup. With creative design, modern equipment and low-power lighting, you may be able to operate indefinitely with solar panels, prioritized power management, and storage batteries. It’s expensive upfront, but you aren’t subject to pollution rules and you will eventually pay for the system with power bill savings. There are numerous companies out there who can finance the costs with your energy savings, but you need a supportive management willing to accept a 15 – 20-year ROI.

Manage your batteries. Says Lombard, “Keep all your batteries charged, have an inverter in your car for battery charging, keep a set of jumper cables in your vehicle, and keep a working 12V battery-powered spotlight in the vehicle.” Rechargeable batteries in infrequently used devices like broadcast radios or flashlights should be the newer lithium-ion (Li-Ion) polymer or low self-discharge nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. The latter are sold under the trade names Sanyo Eneloop, Tenergy Centura, Ultralast Hybrio, Maha Imedion, Energizer Recharge, RayOVac Hybrid, and Duracell Rechargeable Pre-Charged

Keep emergency food rations. This one may not be so obvious to those in better weather climates, but there are going to be times when stores can’t operate. Reminds Lombard, “Keep emergency supplies stored somewhere–but not in vehicles–and send them with crews when they go out on a breaking story that will take a long time or have someone available to run supplies out to field crews.” Emergency water supplies are always there if your station buys water in large jugs, but filters can work if you have a known source of fresh water.

Don’t depend on fiber or two-wire copper links.
In San Diego, some continued working and some didn’t. If a line uses a battery float, it may maintain power for a limited time. Operation of leased lines has become especially difficult to predict.

Consider auxiliary sites.
Especially if you already own or lease an alternative site, putting up a small FM transmitter can be relatively cheap way to stay on the air with huge redundancy value. The payoff for TV and AM can be diminished since few watch TV over-the-air now and AM usually requires expensive antenna engineering.

Communicate with management regarding your capabilities.
This issue deserves an article itself. What is your return on investment with backup power and/or an auxiliary broadcast site? Are you protecting your reputation with your listeners or viewers? Are you an emergency primary station? Are you willing to study pollution laws if running a generator? If you are considering solar and batteries as an alternative, how much will it cost you to partition your power load to run off-the-grid for an indefinite period? At the time of an outage, your general manager and corporate engineering managers must not be surprised by your preparedness level or your job may be on the line. If you have sufficiently informed them of a lack of funds for backup equipment, then they shouldn’t be surprised by your outage. On the other hand, if you were given sufficient money, your equipment should always be ready for operation.

Local Member to Sit on National SBE Board

Chapter 36, and the western US, will be represented this next year on the SBE national board of directors when Gary Stigall is inducted for a two-year term at the national meeting in Columbus, Ohio September 26 – 28. He was among six chosen at large among seven running nationally. Votes were counted August 25th at SBE headquarters.

Gary has been active with Chapter 36 since 1997 and is currently serving in program and certification chairman positions. He travels to Columbus September 25.

September 2011 Meeting – VSI Low Cost Compression

This month Chapter 36 explores low cost MPEG compression solutions for TV. Visionary Solutions, Inc. (VSI) of Santa Barbara specializes in lower cost encoding and decoding hardware for ENG, backhaul, confidence monitoring, and news source sharing. “With declining budgets,  broadcasters seek suppliers that offer outstanding picture quality, rock solid stability and save money over traditional broadcast equipment.  Steve Lee will show live HD video over a private IP network, a webcast of live TV and highlight a wireless HD ENG pack used at a major network.” Steve Lee is National Sales Manager for IPTV products at VSI. Steve has been in computer hardware, enterprise software, cloud computing, mobile application and IPTV sales, marketing and business development positions for 25 years.

Join us for our regular monthly meeting September 21 at noon at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road, in Kearny Mesa, San Diego. VSI is providing lunch. As always, members and guests are welcome.

August 2011 Meeting – Focus

This being 2011, hopefully you’re not bound to videotape or spinning discs any longer. The options for portable production and ENG recording are rich. Our August presenter, Focus, will show us a solution with full HD resolution recording with lots of recording time and all the bells and whistles and none of the polyester.

Mark D’Addio, VP of Business Development, will update us on the capable media recorder and its associated workflow advantages, encoding options, and much more. He has more than 20 years of experience in broadcasting technologies, and works as an applications engineer interfacing with camcorder manufacturers.

Join us Wednesday, August 17 at noon at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road in Kearny Mesa. Focus will provide a lunch. As always, members and guests are welcome.

Society of Broadcast Engineers