Here's something I haven't seen mentioned in the discussion yet: while it's impractical to idle the generators constantly, why not turn them on ahead of time when it appears there's a good chance of troubles with the electrical supply?
The Friday storm had at least a decent hour of warning. I got an alert on my phone from the Weather Underground app, and the radar made it apparent that this was going to be a monster well before it actually hit. Their summary of the events shows that Amazon had decent warning and called in extra staff and took other precautions.
So, given that they had advance warning of a potentially serious storm, why not start up the generators and have them idling beforehand? Is the cost of that still prohibitive even when it looks like there's a good chance they'll be needed?
The Friday storm had at least a decent hour of warning. I got an alert on my phone from the Weather Underground app, and the radar made it apparent that this was going to be a monster well before it actually hit. Their summary of the events shows that Amazon had decent warning and called in extra staff and took other precautions.
So, given that they had advance warning of a potentially serious storm, why not start up the generators and have them idling beforehand? Is the cost of that still prohibitive even when it looks like there's a good chance they'll be needed?