Supermarket Power backup?

[mxslick]

Last night while at my local supermarket, the power went out..as in the HV feeder for the entire block relayed with a very loud buzz as it went down....:grin:

I was just finishing the self-checkout and noticed that although a lot of the lighting went out, and the cold displays shut down, all the checkstands and terminals stayed on. Thankfully, as I had just entered my credit card to pay for my stuff.

So the question is: Do supermarkets use a rather large UPS for the critical stuff, or is it a lot of point-of-use UPS and battery backup in the light troffers? (Lighting is T5 HO.)

As for the outage, it was probably caused by a bad UG splice..again. Our area has been plagued with a rash of bad UG lately.

We continued to have sags and blinks on my apt.s feed all night. (Not on the same feeder as the market.)

 

[mdshunk]

I notice the market I shop at has an UPS under each register station, and I can only assume the server has a similar UPS. They don't have a generator, but they do have a big honking inlet around back for a rental generator, presumably to keep the refrigeration racks humming. I think Bob does, or has done, a lot of supermarket work, so he's probably keyed in on how things are done in general.

 

[frenchelectrican]

Many supermarket centre do have UPS for check out and computer system and securcty system.

But for genral lighting I am sure there are few of them used back up battery on the T-5 or T-8's unless they do have standby generator which they will be used mainally in Frezzer / Cooler compressor system.

And some of the store do have shut down producre so with the UPS system they split in two or more subsystem on UPS side they will program for so many X minutes before they will complety shut down.

Like example a check out area I know one of the store do have UPS run for about 15 min before the checkout system lockdown so that way it will give the customers some time to check out what they have left in the check out lane then it will prodcure to shut down sequince.

Merci,Marc

 

[peter d]

Nothing really special about supermarkets around here. I've done a few of the service calls with Bob so I suppose I'm somewhat qualified to answer. The chains around here generally have a small generator (Bob will know the KW size) that run some basic illumination and the "important" stuff like the cash registers, lobster tanks, scales, computer system, etc.

They are most definitely not big enough to run any of the refrigeration, so they have to bring in dry ice or else they hook up a big portable generator similar to the pics that Bob has shown, if the power is going to be down for any great length of time.

The way Bob explained it to me, is that the massive cost of putting in a permanent standby generator sized to run the entire store is not considered worth it for the few times it might be needed by the management.

 

[mdshunk]

They are most definitely not big enough to run any of the refrigeration, so they have to bring in dry ice or else they hook up a big portable generator similar to the pics that Bob has shown.

I don't know if dry ice is hazardous or not, but I think I darned near bit the big one once upon a time (I think?). Hershey Chocolate has a dot com division, where they mail out chocolates. The dry ice freezer on the shipping dock was down, and getting warmer. I went inside, and my breath went right away. Put me down on one knee immediately, without me even realizing it. That was a little spooky.

 

[mdshunk]

The way Bob explained it to me, is that the massive cost of putting in a permanent standby generator sized to run the entire store is not considered worth it for the few times it might be needed by the management.

If I was a betting man, I might guess that a larger regional chain might own a portable generator, ready to take to whatever store needs it at a moments notice. Just a guess. I know that's how the phone company does it around here.

 

[mxslick]

Wow..fast service here..

Wow..fast service here..

Thanks for the responses so far...

My guess at this time is it would have to be a combination perhaps of point of use UPS and possibly a generator for extended outages...the total outage time on the feeder was only about 10-15 seconds, and it only relayed once. None of the checkstands , etc. even blinked....I'll be going back later to get stuff I forgot for dinner tonite, I'll see if I can find a generator..

Edited to respond to:

The dry ice freezer on the shipping dock was down, and getting warmer. I went inside, and my breath went right away. Put me down on one knee immediately, without me even realizing it. That was a little spooky.

That was because dry ice is solid carbon dioxide. As it "melts" it turns back into gas and it easily displaces oxygen. I had a full cylinder of CO2 discharge in my truck cab once, It put me about under in only a few breaths.

 

[peter d]

If I was a betting man, I might guess that a larger regional chain might own a portable generator, ready to take to whatever store needs it at a moments notice. Just a guess. I know that's how the phone company does it around here.

I think the chains around here have the generator companies on speed dial, as well as Bob's present employer to hook them up. I don't know that they actually own one.

 

[peter d]

never mind.....

 

[mxslick]

Peter:

See my edit in the post above.

 

[peter d]

Peter:

See my edit in the post above.

Yup, I did.

 

[mdshunk]

That was because dry ice is solid carbon dioxide. As it "melts" it turns back into gas and it easily displaces oxygen. I had a full cylinder of CO2 discharge in my truck cab once, It put me about under in only a few breaths.

That's what I figure, but it seems like there ought to be signs or systems in place to warn a fella about that. I honestly had no idea there was even dry ice stored in there, let alone the fact that it was all dry ice. I was just there to work on the walk-in. I could tell from my troubleshooting topside that the defrost termination stat was stuck, and that's inside the box, on the side of the evaporator, otherwise I'd have not even had a reason to go inside.

 

[mxslick]

LOL this is movin waaay too fast...

 

[mdshunk]

LOL this is movin waaay too fast...

I read from time to time about flywheel-generator UPS systems, but I've never seen one. You?

 

[peter d]

Generally speaking the backup generators that I've seen in the supermarkets run on natural gas. Some of them have the inline 6-cylinder 4.9 liter Ford engine that was once very common in the F-series pickups, just to give you an idea of the size/horsepower of the generator.

 

[iwire]

Pete has pretty much laid it out.

We work for one large chain about 350 stores and a couple more local smaller chains.

One or two generators set up to supply emergency loads and optional loads.

The typical optional loads

Deli, meat room, seafood scales,

IT room, Public address and Telco equipment

Register power

Bread slicer

Deli slicers

Lobster tank

Hot water heater and circulate pumps

Basically anything to keep selling during an emergency.

No refrigeration loads.

The stores keep "Power failure kits" which mostly consist of plastic and duct tape to close in the open cases.

The dry ice is a phone call away and comes in large quantity's, the power failure kits have gloves for the employees to handle the dry ice.

If the power is going to off for a while the call is made to bring a generator in.

We actually where in talks with the large chain, and the rental company about installing terminal boxes for generator connections. They decided the price was to high based on past costs. Honestly I think they where right.

On the large stores it takes a about 700 to 800 KW for a restart during a hot day. And that is the load, not Gen set size.

Typically the electric rooms are on the second floor we knock out one concrete block out of the wall and run 3 or 4 sets of 4/0 cables out the hole down to the gen set. We lock off the service main and feed the switch gear bus with the cables.

Some stores have no single main on the switch gear so we have to pull the service conductors off the switch gear and feed it there. Thats a pain and of course must be safely coordinated with the utility.

Oh.... UPS ... yes at each point of sale and larger units in the IT room.


The dry ice, one night I grabbed a large piece and wrapped it up in my Carheart jacket and through it in the back door of my truck to take home to the kids. One of my coworkers followed me most of the way home worried I was going to die.

I filled the bath tub with hot water and dropped the ice in. The kids loved the smoke show. Don't worry I knew it displaced oxygen and I kept things under control.

Enough for now.

 

[peter]

I rebuilt a couple of Target stores. They have an emergency generator and the data room has some sort of UPS. The cash registers do not have individual UPS devices. I wanted to turn off an emergency breaker -- just to see what it was feeding [or maybe to work on it]-- and the idiot manager wouldn't let me. He said it would take ~5 minutes to restart each register.
To me this is stupid since, if there was a power failure, it would take the generator at least 10 seconds to start up and then all the cash registers would be dead.
~Peter
I was surprised that Mr. Wire would openly admit to taking some of the customer's property. "The dry ice, one night I grabbed a large piece and wrapped it up in my Carheart jacket and through it in the back door of my truck to take home." But on the other hand, in these shoplifting cases, I think they have to keep the evidence and present it at trial. "Where's that stolen chunk of dry ice?" "I put it in the evidence locker." "Well, it's not there now."

 

[iwire]

I was surprised that Mr. Wire would openly admit to taking some of the customer's property. "The dry ice, one night I grabbed a large piece and wrapped it up in my Carheart jacket and through it in the back door of my truck to take home."

LOL yeah I am sure they would have been very upset I took some of the leftover ice melting on the loading dock.


When I buy a drink in one of these stores I electrical tape my sales receipt to the bottle.

They did bag me one time on tape 'stealing' light bulbs from the shelfs. I was in the store for contract work and the manager asked me to look at a light, well I fixed the short and grabbed a lamp to replace the one missing from the fixture. I did not bother to charge them for the extra work.

When I was asked about this 'stealing' at a job meeting I said no problem. I will pay for the lamp but then I will fill out a T&M slip for my time with a markup for the lamp. They thought that was a bad idea and said forget about it. :smile:

The loss prevention women was scolded for bringing this up at the meeting without all the information.

 

[Rampage_Rick]

LOL... Great story Bob.

One would wonder if there might be a risk of asphyxiation to store customers with all that CO? displacement.

If you had access to more than a single nugget of dry ice, you could load up a pickup and take it home to toss in the pool. While your neighbors peek over the fence to see where the smoke's coming from, stir the pool with the skimmer and chant incantations in their general direction.

 

[HawkEye_Pierce]

We use it a lot in theater. Usually a 55 gallon drum with a heating element, basket for the dry ice and a hose outlet at the top. Fill the drum 1/3 with water, pug her in and let the water heat up, then drop the basket full of dry ice!


If you like the sound of gun shots then break up some pieces of the stuff and put them in a 2 liter bottle. Then wait a few minutes. . . .