Shadowrun General > The Secret History

Power system reliability?

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Beta:
That low lifestyle and below deals with frequent power outages has long been part of SR lore.  Just wondering if better neighborhoods and corporate offices, etc are actually better served by the grid, or if they just all have a lot of (short-medium term) battery back-ups and (longer term) generators -- just sort of a matter-of-course and cost-of-doing-business sort of thing?

Reaver:
From my understanding of the situation, Its the public grid that is the problem.

Private/corp facilities were generally supplied by fission reactors, making power very cheap after initial costs of construction. (Course, it takes several dump trucks of money to build to start with!)

For example, it was the reactors in the Renraku Arcology that brought the UCAS into the Deus incident. They didn't care that the Arcology was out of control... They DID care about the reactors going into meltdown and taking most of Seattle with it!

And there are other examples from SR history of fission plants being the target of eco terrorists as well...


So all said, I think it's  a case of public utilities not being able to keep up with demand and the poor guy getting squeezed. (The US has had an energy problem for decades, and originally SR built on this....for example Californa pays for power generated by B.C. Hydro dams.... because it is cheaper then building their own power stations.)

Jack_Spade:
Considering the advances in battery technology, total black outs are a bit of an anachronism from the early days of SR.
You can expect that every decently run apartment building will have batteries in the cellar to keep services running. Which means Middle and higher lifestyles.
The slum lords will probably be to cheap for an investment like this. 

Beta:
To refine the wording of my original question:  Given that we 'know' that lower class areas have unreliable power while better off ones seldom see the same issues, I can see two basic scenarios:

- the reliability of power delivery varies between areas, mostly based on 'quality' of the area ('better' areas just don't get brown-outs and black-outs very often)
- the reliability is pretty bad everywhere, so those with the resources have back up plans (batteries, generators, their own power plant, etc)

Note that the problems could really come from two sources:  inadequate power supply (leading to brown-outs and black-outs when supply doesn't meet demand), or weak grid infrastructure (leading to localized black-outs when lines fall down or get dug up, transformers explode, etc).  Either source could well be an issue mostly in poorer areas, but could also be more grid-wide.

Anyway, sounds like there probably isn't anything canon on this, so I can feel free to run a mission focused around the importance of sabotaging back-up power to create a later window of opportunity.

Sphinx:
Gaeatronics has a fusion plant on the Olympic peninsula; solar and wind generators in the Cascades; and geothermal taps along Mt. Rainier (Seattle 2072, p.168). Shiawase operates a fusion plant in Redmond (S72, p.79). There are fusion reactors in the basement of the ACHE (S72, p.42). Modern buildings probably have solar cells embedded in windows and roof tiles (see solarwindow.com and tesla.com/solarroof). So long as the infrastructure is maintained, clean power would be relatively abundant for those who can afford it. I'd say High and Luxury lifestyles never have any trouble, and Medium lifestyles probably get prompt attention from their utility companies whenever there's an outage. Low lifestyles on the fringes might have to deal with rolling brownouts and occasional outages lasting up to a few days.

The canonical power and water problems in actual barrens areas (Squatter and Street lifestyles) are the result of crumbling infrastructure, neglected grids, illegal hookups, vandalism, and so on. And good luck getting utility crews to respond without a police escort. Major utility corridors probably get routine maintenance every few months with heavy security coverage, like an armored convoy checking the lines, but the rest of the Z-zones are on their own.

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