Working and planning together to ensure long-term reliability of electrical power supply

October 27, 2022

 

UBC is upgrading the campus electrical distribution system to address aging infrastructure and to prepare the campus for future electrification to meet Climate Action goals. As a consequence of this work, if an outage occurs, larger portions of the campus may be impacted. The onset of the winter storm season will also heighten this risk even further.

By working and planning together, we can greatly reduce risk to infrastructure, equipment, and research by addressing campus growth needs and ensure long-term reliability of electrical power supply. UBC Facilities and Safety & Risk Service recognizes the value of your work and the impact a disruption in electrical power supply can have on your research.

While BC Hydro’s electrical service to the UBC campus is reliable, there will be times when power can fluctuate or fail due to weather events or upstream equipment failures. Our teams can assist during planned shutdowns and unexpected power outages, but planning ahead will help minimize risk to your equipment and research in the long term. During a power outage, our resources are limited and our teams may not be able to respond or help due to demand.

To make our transition to a more electrified future and ensure long-term reliability of electrical power supply we will need your help to operate a more resilient campus electrical system. All of these efforts are part of our long-term, integrated risk-management strategy.

Continuity Planning

Safety & Risk Services advises faculty/departments to annually review departmental continuity plans for planned shut downs or unexpected power outages. The objective of continuity planning is to ensure the continuation of critical university services including teaching and research for an extended duration of time following an initial emergency or threat. The duration of time may range from a few hours to many days or even months.

Continuity Plans are tools where a unit or department records what its impacts will be from a given interruption (such as power outage) and how it will work around to overcome these impacts for a given period of time. It is also a tool for recording resources, personnel or other important information that will assist in guiding itself through the interruption. Recording this information and then making it available to all necessary personnel allows for deliberate and approved actions to be made when adverse circumstances arise.

Protect your equipment

Protect your equipment investments by implementing an electrical standby strategy that meets your research need. Please consider the following when planning for electrical power outages:

  • Review critical power needs: Take steps to lead your team through a review of critical power needs for your area.
  • Standby power: Work with your Building Administrator to determine if your area is supported by standby generator power or Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). Contact your Facilities Manager if further support is required.
  • Near-term: If your equipment is not supported by standby power and have a critical need, create a Continuity Plan using the template provided by Safety & Risk Services. Once you have completed your Continuity Plan, please contact Safety & Risk Services if you need further support. Learn more about Continuity Planning.
  • Long-term: Contact your Facilities Manager to learn about technical requirements and develop long-term plans for protecting your equipment and research.
  • Freezers: Do you have dry ice supply readily available to place in freezers during an outage to extend freeze time? You may want to create a consolidation plan to move frozen items to other freezers to extend freeze time.

Learn more

 

For questions and support, our Facilities Managers can help connect you to the appropriate technical specialist to advise you with procuring the correct systems and capacity on a customer funded basis