"The financial consequences of an outage somewhere in the FAA network – not to mention the disruption of business and personal travel – can be severe,” said Mark A. Ascolese, Chairman and CEO of EDSA. "The direct and indirect financial toll can quickly reach millions of dollars in higher fuel expenses, lost landing revenue, increased employee costs, and spoiled perishable cargo… not to mention the disruption of airline schedules, passengers' missed business meetings, canceled vacations, and so on. This award by the FAA is evidence of their commitment to passenger safety and convenience.”
The award is part of the FAA's continuing efforts to increase air safety by alleviating potential electrical power problems in its facilities, which are responsible for controlling the 17 million square miles of America's airspace. As the FAA operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and moves more than 760 million passengers and 40 billion tons of freight a year through its airspace, the agency must have a reliable power system.
Paladin Live will be deployed in FAA facilities nationwide to help accurately predict potential power problems in their formative stages – while there is still time to affect repairs, avert an outage, and prevent a disruption in flight operations or safety.
Initially, Paladin Live is being deployed in two types of critical National Air Space (NAS) facilities: Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs) and Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities (TRACONs.) While individual control towers are responsible for air traffic arriving and departing from a specific airport, ARTCCs and TRACONs are responsible for traffic between airports in a geographical area: one facility can service as many as 60 airports and manage over 500,000 square miles of airspace.
As such, these facilities have enormous electrical power requirements – for computing, communications, navigation, air traffic control, weather, and other systems on their premises – so the FAA is constantly researching the most advanced technologies to protect its electrical power infrastructure.
"Taken by themselves, FAA facilities are comparable to some of the most demanding mission-critical data centers in the world,” Mr. Ascolese said. "But when you take a data center – and then add air traffic displays, communications, and weather-tracking equipment – you end up with something far more complex than you'll usually find at a server farm.
“These are the types of installations that Paladin Live is designed for, and we're eager to show the FAA how dramatically we can help them improve the resilience of their facilities.”