The equation above is the power dissipation in a circuit element. Power dissipated is equal to the current through that element multiplied by the voltage drop across that element. Why am I telling you this? Because my building is one. BIG. circuit element.
I got back to the dorm about 6:30 Sunday. I'm looking at it and wondering why it's dark. "Did we have another power outage?"
Ask a stupid question.
The power had gone out about 5am Sunday morning. The dorm wasn't *completely* dark, since there are battery backups to maintain hall lights and emergency lighting, but there was no heat, no hot water, and no lights in the rooms. I had to go over to my cousin's house and stay there that night. More than that, I was stuck without my math book to do my homework.
Well, not that I'm really complaining.
Anyway, so they brought in about ten billion emergency generators from somewhere or other and by about 6pm Monday we had power back. Monday night I stayed in the dorm. Tuesday night I stayed in the dorm ...
... and the internet went down about 11:45. By 12:30 it was back ...
... and the power went out again. One of the generators went down or something. Only this time, it was even better: we'd drained the batteries while the power was out, and the generators weren't used to recharge them due to finite power, so we had no hall lights or emergency lights!
It didn't come back until about 1:30, by which time I was getting kind of blahed out about the day. Worse -- I have a laptop, but it was useless because my USB hub is powered and each building has its own server, so the servers were all down!
Wahoo.
-David
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