Narrative:

I arrived at work early and flexed in. I received a call from the tower to come up as soon as possible to assist. I was notified by the local control that communications had been lost (landlines work; no radio); and that pet-2000s [back up radios] were being used. I coordinated the information with tech ops; who notified personnel about the issue. When I arrived in the operation; an [aircraft] was taxiing when communications were lost; and communications were lost for an indeterminate period of time before the pets were activated and tuned.the cause of the event was the power bump on starting the engine generator. Tech ops notified us that the breakers had been tripped at the [receiver/transmitter] site; and needed to be reset.the fact that this happened early in the morning with minimal traffic resulted in the best possible outcome - had workload been greater; this sort of outage (which could occur whenever the engine generator turns on) could result in communications loss during critical phases of control; and could easily result in losses of separation and more serious safety events.tech ops indicated that this loss would not have occurred had a battery+dc bus been present; as required by FAA order 6950.2D. Appendix one calls for power source 'D' to be used at [receiver/transmitter] sites; and that code denotes that commercial power and batteries + dc bus are required for rtr sites. Tech ops indicated desire to comply with this; and that it would mitigate these issues; but that he had been told by his superiors that ZZZ doesn't need one.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Tower Controller reported loss of radios and equipment requirements that were not being followed.

Narrative: I arrived at work early and flexed in. I received a call from the tower to come up ASAP to assist. I was notified by the LC that communications had been lost (landlines work; no radio); and that PET-2000s [back up radios] were being used. I coordinated the information with Tech ops; who notified personnel about the issue. When I arrived in the operation; an [aircraft] was taxiing when communications were lost; and communications were lost for an indeterminate period of time before the PETs were activated and tuned.The cause of the event was the power bump on starting the engine generator. Tech ops notified us that the breakers had been tripped at the [receiver/transmitter] site; and needed to be reset.The fact that this happened early in the morning with minimal traffic resulted in the best possible outcome - had workload been greater; this sort of outage (which could occur whenever the engine generator turns on) could result in communications loss during critical phases of control; and could easily result in losses of separation and more serious safety events.Tech Ops indicated that this loss would not have occurred had a battery+DC bus been present; as required by FAA Order 6950.2D. Appendix one calls for power source 'D' to be used at [receiver/transmitter] sites; and that code denotes that commercial power and batteries + DC BUS are required for RTR sites. Tech Ops indicated desire to comply with this; and that it would mitigate these issues; but that he had been told by his superiors that ZZZ doesn't need one.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.