- Location
- Massachusetts
I was TDY at a USG facility in [SOMEWHERE] & a question came up about exactly which security equipment was on the building generator, and which wasn't. Since this was important, I said "Show me. I want a power fail test...." Amazingly, I got it.
So at 6 pm, we pulled the poco feed. Main generator started, the right lighting came up, but we soon found out that many of the shredders and other classified destruction equipment were oops not generator loads. We also found out the transfer pump to refill the day tank was among the oops.
But the bigger blowback was the comms area emergency generator had failed to start, and their feed was NOT a building generator load. So they were black during our test. Not Good....
None of those items other than egress lighting and perhaps the day tank are allowed to be supplied from an emergency generator.
Those are all examples of optional standby loads to the NEC.