The recent severe storms have inflicted significant harm to the power grid and other utility pole-based infrastructure (e.g., Xfinity). For nearly 48 hours, most of our 800-square-mile service area was without power. While grid power was restored to many areas on Monday evening, many others still lack power.

 

Driven by our social mission, we have made the ambitious goal of building reliable infrastructure despite the coast’s specific challenges. Among the biggest challenges is the lack of reliable grid power.

We are very proud to report that despite the massive grid power failure, 100% of our core relays have remained fully operational. 85% of our subscribers are served by relays that have backup power.

 

Power redundancy is made possible with specialized batteries and chargers, power management software, fixed and portable generators, years of preparation and planning, and a lot of heavy lifting by our field team. We also get a lot of help from community members who generously provide power to nearby relays – !! BIG THANKS TO RELAY HOSTS !!

 

Our work is not done. 15% of our subscribers are served by very new relays or relays that are too small to have battery backups. If you are served by one of these relays, we will consider adding backup power or providing you with equipment to charge your relay. Please contact us if you are interested.

 

You need backup power for your home to benefit from Further Reach’s network backup power. The following page has more information about powering your home’s Further Reach gear:

https://furtherreach.net/faq-/backup-power/ .

 

In addition to the unreliable power grid, there are other challenges to keeping our network operational, including extreme wind, torrential rain, power surges, corrosive spray, and innumerable operational hurdles like availability of fuel or simply navigating roads. After years of design iteration for installing infrastructure to be resilient to these factors, and despite having thousands of sensitive devices spread over hundreds of square miles and in locations most exposed to storm conditions, our network was almost entirely unharmed. We had only a single device failure during the storm – that device was very near the water, and its mount failed. It was repaired in two hours.

 

With storms of this magnitude being relatively common, one might think that Further Reach didn’t do its homework before setting up shop on the Coast in 2012. In fact, we picked the Mendonoma coast because it was particularly challenging – and not just because of the weather – Among its other charms, the coast is sparsely populated, extremely rugged, and densely forested. Road closures are common, and grid power is unreliable.

 

Our approach to keeping the network operational during storms is iterative. Early on, we made many good design decisions that did not work well under real-world conditions. We embraced failures as lessons – opportunities to improve next time.

 

Our technical approach to remaining operational during grid failures is a combination of batteries, chargers, power management software, and generators. We have cycled through numerous variants of each component as we optimized our solution.

 

Smaller relay sites are designed to operate for at least 48 hours in the event of grid failure. These sites also have external ports to allow them to be charged by local residents in case of a prolonged outage.

Large core network sites are maintained directly by us and have sufficient infrastructure (batteries, generators, fuel, and staff) to run for weeks without grid power.

Initially, our standard practice was installing backup power at all core sites to run for 12-24 hours in case of a utility failure.

Because outages were typically restricted to relatively small geographic areas, this approach would allow us sufficient time to bring a generator to the site if PGE faced an extended repair. This initial approach to power backups performed well for years.

The 2019 PGE Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) was an unprecedented event, 108-hour long, and one that affected our entire 800 square mile service area at the same time.

Since then, we have reimagined power backup, monitoring, and management. Power redundancy remains the most costly component of our network.

● We have moved away from AGM batteries to Lithium Iron Phosphate units, which are designed to be deeply discharged and have under-voltage protection, have higher usable capacity, and more stable chemistry (safer), but are 10 times more expensive.

● We are in the third generation of battery chargers and battery management technology.

● We employ state-of-the-art power management and monitoring tools.

● We have remote-start, standby generators at our largest sites, and a large number of generators and fuel on hand.

● We install transfer switches at almost all relay sites that allow homeowners to safely charge a relay site (using their own generators) without needing access to our utility box.

● We have an affordable backup device that we recommend to subscribers who do not have a backup generator.