Winter Storm Prep - Should We Power Down Equipment

[Chris Haller]

As the title said, we're about to get hit by the big northeast storm tomorrow here in Rochester. Our cinema is closing the theaters early on sunday and opening late on monday. I'm worried that there might be power outages to contend with due to the sheer amount of snow and extreme cold conditions.

I am leaning towards powering the projectors down as a precautionary measure as we normally leave them in standby overnight and do weekly reboots. They're attached to battery backup of course. What do you folks think? Or is this as straightforward as I'm thinking it is.

[Tj Hopland]

Cooperate situation just check with the boss or manual and do what you are told for better or worse. If its more of an owner operated thing then......

I assume you have been in the building when the power goes wacky, think about what usually happens and would any of that be bad if no one was there to do anything about it? Are all the auto schedules for sure canceled? Maybe your movie schedule is out but the ad program will still try to start things up because they didn't get the message or their network to central HQ went down before yours did? So if you shut some things off but some stuff still starts that could be bad? Like you don't want to have the exhaust fan off and something on the schedule manages to start the show.

If you do a proper shut down and the power goes off and comes back how does stuff respond? Does it stay off or act differently than if it was just a power blip?

I'm not saying yes or no because different equipment is going to do different things depending on what the power is doing but if you think about it based on past experiences you may have your answer which will be the least of the evils.


A side note is if you normally don't get snow storms and have the conventional xenon setup with external exhaust fans leaving the fans running during the storm may be a good thing. The airflow and building heat being exhausted may help the wind from driving snow down the pipe and into the projector. Yes there could or should be some sort of damper but are they working and up to the task of an unusual storm? Yes its more energy spent but for a day or two compared to having a projector full of snow......... Even if the damper works and you don't get any snow or cold air into the projector what if the outlet/roof unit just gets buried in snow? Then you try to run it? Burn up a motor? Melt snow that now leaks in?

Again not saying for sure to go one way or another but I have had projectors full of snow and panic calls because there is water dripping and projector is complaining about temp/flow. I know several sites that that is part of their procedure, if its a snow storm either lots of wind and snow or both they leave em running till its over.

[Bruce Cloutier]

Chris, Are they making a big deal about this storm in Rochester NY? I have 23 years history in Fairport NY. We sit around down here in Pittsburgh and still laugh about the panic they all get into when there's going to be 4-6" or something. I sold my snowmobiles when we moved here. The storm is supposed to go by south of us. Maybe they are predicting sizeable lake effect up there? I mean, we would wake up in the morning there after getting 6 inches overnight and nothing would be affected, even the schools. Anyway, we are excited to maybe get slammed.

Do you know how long your UPS can maintain power? It might work good for short dropouts as may happen randomly but when your grid goes solidly down you might not get more than an hour? Does your equipment monitor the UPS and shutdown before power is pulled out from under it? That is an automation that could be established but I haven't seen anyone do it, not with the JNIOR anyway. I have a 410 monitoring my solar and the grid here. It can be done easily.

But I was going to suggest searching for discussions back during the COVID shutdowns. You can see what issues came up.

If any of you are interested... this is Fairport NY to the SE of Rochester live. I started my first company in that grey building (behind the big evergreen bushes) on the other side of the tracks there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWxyuL9dctA

You can check on Chris' storm. It is supposed to start here in Pittsburgh late this evening.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Good rule of thumb: ALL electronics or super expensive gear gets shut down at the panel. As TJ suggests, keep exhaust fans running to push wind and snow out of the machines. (You do risk burning up an exhaust fan motor if it is three phase and the storm causes a phase loss, or if a single phase motor sees extended undervoltage, both still cheaper than letting water or snow find the equipment.)

Set all HVAC to maintain around 60-65 degrees on the normal scale (15.5 to 18 for you others using the c scale) in the lobby and all auditoria and 70 deg f (21c) in the booths, if you have any. Those settings are nice compromise for not wasting too much energy in a unoccupied building, but also provide enough latent heat in the structure if the power goes out for 12-24 hours and still keep the building from freezing.

Also, shut off your water at the incoming mainline to the building. DO NOT leave the water trickling in an unattended building!! If for any reason the building gets too cold, the drains WILL freeze up and that trickle WILL fill a room with a foot or two of ice. (Don't ask how a local business near me found that out the hard way.)

Finally, IF IT IS SAFE TO DO SO, check in on the building every day or every other day if possible.

Take care and lets us know how you fare through that storm.

[Chris Haller]

To answer some questions,

Bruce - yeah. They're predicting like a potential of 2 feet of snowfall in one shot starting Sunday evening here in Rochester. If this happens, it'll be the most intense winter storm we've had in at least a decade. We've definitely got a bit of Lake Ontario lake effect for sure. Last time we had a major power outage our UPSs last long enough on maybe half the screens to allow me to shut the movie down and power down the projectors correctly at one location. We haven't had any major power losses at my current location, but I oversee the Pittsford and Greece locations out here in terms of projection tech. My equipment does not coordinate with the UPS at all based on experience.

TJ - the good news is that these are both laser projection sites without any direct HVAC to the outside. I've definitely had equipment failure in the past and these projectors are pretty finicky if power flickers. I also handle all scheduling and TMS programming. I've already seen to it that projectors are off and shows are no longer programmed to start with the ad playback.

Sounds like I'll advise the teams at both sites to properly power down the projectors at close tomorrow. I'm fairly good at convincing projectors that have been shut down improperly to come back, but the rest of my manager peers are much more hands off. That way we don't have to worry about issues at open when they boot them back up.

Thanks everyone. Shouldn't be more than a few days of intense snow and extreme cold. Nothing I haven't lived through before, but my first big storm where I'm overseeing the tech setup for theaters.

[Leo Enticknap]

They're attached to battery backup of course.

If a lead acid battery of the sort used in most UPS systems is allowed to deep discharge, the risk is high that the anode plates will sulfate and cause permanent damage to the battery. The worst case scenario is that you'll need to replace the battery pack before being able to use the equipment powered through that UPS again. Of course this risk doesn't exist if a brownout or short blackout happens, but it does if the power is going to be out for hours or days.

Agreed with Tony about shutting down at the panel if erratic power is anticipated. The big risk is of a surge when it comes back on.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Or you could be like me and be told our show was cancelled today and not to come in (probably not tomorrow either).

I'm sure the facilities folks are doing their prep relative to the building... but no one thinks about the booth. Fully powered except the Christie is in standby, 650 is off, and breakers to the 35mm motors/lamp/base-outlets are left off except when needed. In the last great Texas storm, that part of downtown did not lose power. But ya never know.

The exhaust fans tip is a good one relative to blowing snow... but not much of that in our forecast down here. Protracted cold and power is the main concern... but only supposed to be a 3 day cold snap, compared to the prior when everything in Texas failed.

I prepped for the bad scenarios at home, Texans have a learned respect for cold now.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Our booth survived it with no issues thankfully. Hope everyone else did!
Have a digital film rolling tonight, will check my 35mm exhaust situation after credits.

Can't say the same for my condo building. We had a roof drain shift in the icing somehow... started missing the drain once the thaw hit today and flooded the ceiling and walls of a unit two doors down from mine, and gravity fed down the walls and did the same in the units below them. If mold kicks off it's gonna be a full insulation and drywall redo (including ceiling). Yikes.

[Mike Blakesley]

We're in the midst of one of the mildest winters we've had, despite predictions early on that it was going to be a "colder, wetter" winter than normal. I realize winter is not over. In 2011 we had a "dry" winter and then it started snowing in March, and snowed every day until April when it started raining and just kept raining. We had about two years' worth of precip in one month. So you literally never know what to expect around here.

What's kind of comical to me is, sometimes the power company will announce a planned outage and give out a list of things for us to do to protect our sensitive equipment. So we back up, unplug, power down, and otherwise prepare. Then some random storm comes rolling in a few weeks later (doesn't have to be a big storm), and we're hit with a six-hour UNANNOUNCED power outage with no time to prepare anything.

Usually the results are the same from both incidents...a few things get fouled up, we pick up the pieces and move on.

[Frank Cox]

Some years ago Sask Power put up an outage web page so if your power is out you can check that web page and see if your area is already listed before phoning in to report it to them.

I noticed that some of the descriptions included wording that said "planned power outage", but there was never any way for the public to know when such a thing was planned.

I asked about it at the time and was told that they didn't have any system to notify the public about a planned outage.

So as far as everyone was concerned planned or unplanned meant that your power went out unexpectedly. That wasn't particularly useful.

Since then they have come out with the Sask Power app and that actually sends you notifications of planned power outages in your area before they occur.

Thankfully, the power doesn't go out here very often but I have the Sask Power app set to "never sleep" so I always get their notifications.

[Leo Enticknap]

SoCal Edison also has a website (and likely an app as well, though I don't use it) in a map format, whereby you can look to see if they already know about the outage you're experiencing, and report it if they don't. If they do, they post updates and ETAs for getting it fixed.

The weather has been completely unremarkable in SoCal. We've had a couple of blasts of Santa Ana winds and a few spells of light drizzle, which is par for the course in January. Hoping that everyone further east is keeping safe and not experiencing too much business disruption.

[Mike Blakesley]

Our power co. has an automated system that calls everyone and tells them when they plan an outage. But about half of the outages we experience aren't planned....they just happen due to weather mostly. If a big storm goes thorough here, we can almost count on a brief power failure within about 15 minutes when the storm hits the power station east of town.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Our power distribution co. has the tendency to announce maintenance work with great fanfare, including a complete booklet and on-line instructions of what to do, only to have nothing happening during the announced maintenance window. This happened to us twice in about a year and is pretty frustrating. The first time this happened, I did a preventive shutdown of relevant systems, the second time, I decided to "ride it out", as in, I waited for the moment that the emergency lightning would come on and the UPSes would start to beep... which didn't come...

If a lead acid battery of the sort used in most UPS systems is allowed to deep discharge, the risk is high that the anode plates will sulfate and cause permanent damage to the battery. The worst case scenario is that you'll need to replace the battery pack before being able to use the equipment powered through that UPS again. Of course this risk doesn't exist if a brownout or short blackout happens, but it does if the power is going to be out for hours or days.

Usually, your UPS will protect the battery against a complete discharge, also in case of a total power outage. It's pretty common though that when a UPS gets taken out of service for whatever reason, it' will be left in the equipment rack, unpowered, or thrown to the side and be forgotten. When you try to reactivate it later, the battery, in case of a lead-based one, will be completely gone though and will need a replacement. Unfortunately, not all UPSes handle this equally well. While some models will simply reject the battery, some UPSes will accept it but once they need to take over the load, they'll instantly collapse.

Similar to the orphan IMB topic, a temporary orphanaged UPS should be left powered-on, for the sake of battery life.