But no matter what the cost, the investment in a little extra copper paid off handsomely for Suncoast on the day the lightning struck….
...And No One Noticed!
Earl Brendle, Suncoast's vice president, facilities, was working in one of the bank's branches when he got a call from the data center. As Brendle recalls, "The data center has a 250-kW emergency generator and transfer switch to keep us on line whenever we lose utility power for extended periods. Last year, one of the center's technicians stepped outside about half an hour after a storm passed and noticed that the generator was running, and would I please stop by to reset it.
"When I got to the data center, the generator was still powering the building. That seemed odd, because if the generator had kicked in due to an outage, it should have shut down once utility power was restored.
"Then I saw the meter, or rather, the mass of burned metal and insulation that was left of the meter socket (Figure 2). Lightning had struck our 480-V service entrance cable. It blew the meter off the wall (we never did find it) and headed straight for the transfer switch and generator.