Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Oahu is dark tonight

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-27-2008, 02:24 AM:

The power went out throughout the island of Oahu early this evening at about 6:45 before I had my dinner and it looks like it will not be back on for at least twelve hours. I guess I will have go to bed hungry. President-Elect Barak Obama is here and I wonder how he and is family is doing without any power? The power outage was caused by lightening when it tripped off the main circuit cutting off power to the entire island of Oahu. All of our malls here in Honolulu and especially our movie theatres had to shut down early and all shows cancelled. The airport had to revert to emergency power and incoming flights were allowed to land but all outgoing flights were cancelled.

-Claude

[ 12-27-2008, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Claude S. Ayakawa ]

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-27-2008, 10:44 AM:

Wow. How about that. My uncle lives on Oahu. I'm sure he's ok though as he's quite resourceful. Does that kind of thing happen often out there?

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-27-2008, 12:41 PM:

I far as I could remember, what had happened last night never occurred before, Mark. Just like the earthquake a couple of years ago that had caused a lot of damage on Hawaii, Maui and Oahu, there will be an investigation on why the entire island of Oahu lost power. When the lights went out, I thought the neighboring community still had power so I got in my car hoping to find a place where I could get something to eat. To my dismay, I could see a good portion of southern Oahu including the city of Honolulu from a stretch of the H-1 freeway near my house and saw power was out everywhere. I just turned around and had only a pear for dinner. Thank God for my Apple Powerbook laptop computer, battery power and wireless internet service, I was able to go online to our local newspaper websites to find out what was going on and post my thread on the power outage here. Power was restored here in Waipahu at about 5:00 am but Honolulu was still out. The get the latest news on the Oahu power failure, go to www.honoluluadvertiser.com.

-Claude

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 12-27-2008, 04:19 PM:

I don't have any idea of the frequency of power outages in HI but here in Virginia I have endured many that were multiple days in length. That is why I have a backup generator and a transfer switch. Having well water means the well pump must function in order to flush the toilets. So my backup power is a sustained 5KW which is enough to service the well pump and keep a few other essentials operable. Its interesting that when the power is out one can hear the mummer of multiple generators as many of my neighbors have done the same thing.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 12-27-2008, 04:27 PM:

Power company here in Louisville has a policy of deferred maintenance. 80% of the line workers were terminated 7-10 years ago.

Most big new homes come with large generators. My 105 year old total electric home has a 40Kw, 4 cylinder Ford truck engine running on LP gas. The grocery stores are installing dual backup generators now. Cinemas? Louis

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-27-2008, 04:36 PM:

We don't have that problem here and the crews are all still very employed by Rocky Mountain Power. In fact the town I live in has it's own power company as do several others in Utaw and we are the sole receivers in Utaw of electricity from Glen Canyon Dam... the rest of the electricity from the dam is routed to power Phil's home.

BTW: Our electricity is also far less expensive than the rest of the Mountain States.

So Rick, Do you and the rest of your neighbors sell the excess power generated back to your power company???

Mark

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-27-2008, 06:43 PM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
Rocky Mountain Power

Yea, good ol' Utah Power and Light ("Utah Plunder and Lurch.." [Big Grin]

) they were smart to change their name....

UPL used to service a tonnage of people in E.Idaho and would charge more than Idaho Power...

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Cinemas?

Both of the EDWARDS Theatres in this area have a diesel electric generator located behind the building to power the emergency, computers and necessary lights if power does drop at these large complexes.

-Monte

Posted by Phil Hill (Member # 371) on 12-27-2008, 07:07 PM:

FYI Mark, I'm no longer on "the grid". I have solar panels and my pet squirrels running around in their wheels to generate ALL my required power.

When I fire up my 35mm projector and 2k lamphouse, I put 15 more squirrels to work to take care of the additional power requirement.

I used to depend on the West Coast 1-Million-Volt DC line and AC converter in Sylmar, but the 1994 earthquake failure convinced me to go to squirrel power.

Posted by Tim Reed (Member # 137) on 12-28-2008, 08:32 AM:

quote: Louis Bornwasser
Power company here in Louisville has a policy of deferred maintenance. 80% of the line workers were terminated

Louis, when we lived there, Louisville had one of the best power setups around. What happened?

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 12-28-2008, 09:18 AM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
So Rick, Do you and the rest of your neighbors sell the excess power generated back to your power company???

The transfer switch isolates the generator from the mains. I used to just back-feed the breaker box and kill the main breaker but after 2 long outages in less than 2 weeks this past Spring, I decided to go code and install the transfer gear.