Generators and UPS Fun

Okay, i'm a dork and geek. Learning random shituff from your peers in other fields is fun to me. especially when they let me ask my noob questions and answer them minus the sarcasm. onward to the story.

We've installed a generator at one of our sites. The generator powers both my MDF and IDFs along with the freezers for food service. (for those of you going why freezer too...if that food spoils, we could be out of $500k...yeah, my network gear at $250k is important, but thats a lot of food too. Yeah yeah yeah, down time, loss productivity, etc are costs too, but that 500k versus streaming a youtube khan academy lesson is harder to quantify in k-12). So, the generator is in. our gear is also protected by a UPS which we left in place since generators need 1-30 seconds to come on even with an ATS. Line cleaning of the voltage and all that other wonderful stuff is good too for the day-to-day operation. One day we lose power. The generator kicks on. the freezers go on to the generator. the UPS in my closets light up like an X-mas tree. wtf does that error code mean. other than the UPS isn't happy and we are on battery and the battery say less than 15 minutes. So, post mortem begins. (thank god it was during the summer while 90% of staff was out). Yeah, everyone blamed my UPS. I get the UPS codes based on the error light. Line voltage error. still blaming the UPS. Get our master electrician in. show him the UPS works on standard line power, but not generator. ask him to prove me an idiot or prove me right. I say its still an generator problem. 2 minutes later (yeah, he's pretty swift and smart), he has the problem IDed. I'm not an idiot! (yay?!) Standard building power is 240, generator is 208. I have deer eyes. I ask my questions. explain. well, most UPSes won't accept more than a 10% change in voltage. If it is bigger than 10% change you get the line voltage errors. so, 240-24 is 216 and 208 is less than 216 which is more than 10% delta. UPS stayed pissed off and never accepted the generator as a valid power input. Battery drained and we were offline. a step up transformer is being installed to fix the issue to fix the issue. 

Moral 1 of the story: Make sure your generator and utility voltage match.

Moral 2 of the story: respect your peers and what they know outside your trade! Never know when the electrician or HVAC or alarm guy may help you out too.

Moral 3: School districts store a lot of food in the central freezers. A lot.