Re: Shake and Quake!
The reason why Honolulu's power went down and stayed down as long as it did is because of Oahu's power grid. It has more customers and is more complex than the power grids on the Neighbor Islands.
One bummer thing about Hawai'is power grids is you are kind of isolated in the middle of nowhere; if your grid goes down, the power company can't divert power from other neighboring grids like they do up here.
Miulang
P.S. There were a couple of positive things that came out of this, though. One is that HECO had better figure out why the entire grid went down instead of just producing a brownout to accommodate that 12% loss of generator power, and I am truly grateful that this happened on a Sunday and early enough in the morning that most people were still at home. If you thought yesterday was a mess, think of how much worse it could have been if the earthquakes had struck around 10:30 a.m. on a workday (like our Nisqually quake did) with everybody having to leave their offices and sitting on the freeway trying to get home.
The reason why Honolulu's power went down and stayed down as long as it did is because of Oahu's power grid. It has more customers and is more complex than the power grids on the Neighbor Islands.
HECO said the earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 6.6, caused two generators on O'ahu to shut down. The two — one at Kahe Point and the other at Aloha Tower Downtown — accounted for about 12 percent of the generating capacity of the system at the time.
Once those generators stopped producing, HECO's automated system started shutting off power to customers, so demand would not overwhelm the 11 generators that were still working.
Once those generators stopped producing, HECO's automated system started shutting off power to customers, so demand would not overwhelm the 11 generators that were still working.
Miulang
P.S. There were a couple of positive things that came out of this, though. One is that HECO had better figure out why the entire grid went down instead of just producing a brownout to accommodate that 12% loss of generator power, and I am truly grateful that this happened on a Sunday and early enough in the morning that most people were still at home. If you thought yesterday was a mess, think of how much worse it could have been if the earthquakes had struck around 10:30 a.m. on a workday (like our Nisqually quake did) with everybody having to leave their offices and sitting on the freeway trying to get home.
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