DHS plans back-up cross-agency data center

Worries about the weakness of regional power grids on the East Coast have prompted DHS to move forward with plans to build a second cross-agency data center to mirror the existing facility located at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Washington Technology reports. The worry is that the Eastern Interconnect, a group of eight regional reliability areas or power pools that exchange electricity for economic, pollution control and reliability purposes, is too vulnerable to brownouts and blackouts caused by natural disasters and price manipulations. This second data center — which will be built somewhere on either the Texas Interconnect or the Western Interconnect— will synchronize constantly with the Stennis center, allowing it to take over in the event of disaster. These latter interconnects are said to be much more independant and rugged than the former. According to WT, DHS is currrently in a down-selection phase to pick the vendor, with a decision to be rendered this summer.