Power Outage at Candlestick Park

Just prior to the start of last night’s Monday Night Football game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, the country saw firsthand what happens when a utility transformer suddenly explodes. As the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and San Francisco 49ers was set to start, a utility transformer supplying power to the stadium blew up causing a power outage and delayed the start of the game by 20 minutes.

What was witnessed last night is the reality of utility feeds. They fail. Sometimes spectacularly!

Had Candlestick Park been powered by a “True Dual Feed” like Data Foundry’s Texas 1 Data Center, last night’s game would have started without a hitch.

What is “True Dual Feed” power and is your data center configured in such a manner? Most data center operators will misuse the term “dual feed” when communicating the power configuration of their respective facilities. In reality, using the term “dual feed” does not always mean that the facility is receiving two independent power feeds from the utility company to the data center as it might imply. To help explain the typical power feed configurations, we have prepared a white paper that utilizes the following classification system;

  • Class 1 – Single Feed
  • Class 2 – Single Substation
  • Class 3 – Dual Substations
  • Class 4 – True Dual Feed

To find out if your data center is truly dual fed, learn The Truth about Dual Power Feeds by downloading a free copy of our white paper. Click here to download.