Heard via e-mail that there was a power outtage in Honolulu, Hawaii last night (1/14) around 6:30pm. Does anyone have info on this?

-- Sue (Sue@dot.com), January 15, 1999

Answers

If there was a power outage in the Honolulu area last night, it must have been a small localized one. Didn't notice power loss and didn't hear about on TV news and radio...

-- Russell (Oh Boy@y2k.com), January 15, 1999.

Cory Hamasaki says the power will stay on in Hawaii. Anyone heard otherwise?

-- King of Free Estimates (Ishoping@this.time), January 15, 1999.

Hawaiian Electric (who supplies just about all the power to the Island of Oahu) claims:

http://hei01.hei.com/heco/y2k.htm

"As the primary source of electricity on Oahu, it's our job at Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO), to do our best to provide homes and businesses on our island with uninterrupted power.

However, there will always be incidents over which our utilities have no control - from technology that fails to acts of God, making it impossible to guarantee uninterrupted electric service.

HECO places the highest value on supplying electricity on a continuous basis to our customers. In fact, HECO keeps the lights on 99 percent of the time. In addition, HECO's Equivalent Forced Outage Rate (EFOR)-the time our generating units are not available to carry full rated load due to unplanned outages-is one of the best in the nation."

[my comments] Hawaiian Electric has no power grid interconnectivity, which is probably why Cory says that this grid may stay up. However, I feel that if Y2K fixes are not completed in time, we will have NO power because of that same lack of interconnectivity. Also, we have no fuel here - everything gets shipped in via containers and tankers. How long before HECO runs out of fuel...

Sign me "still worried".

-- Russell (Oh Boy@y2k.com), January 15, 1999.

Maybe Cory is still over there working and he "glitched"? Nah. That wouldn't happen.

Could be just "one of those things"

S.O.B.

-- sweetolebob (La) (buffgun@hotmail.com), January 15, 1999.

Having no other backup makes recovery easier - since somebody else's roblems won't affect "you" - and harder since there is nobody else to rely on. But, if they fix as many things as possible ahead of time, and have contingency plans in place for those failures that were unpredictable, recovery should be eaier.

And the real advantage in HI is that a regional power failure is not life-threatening due to freezing weather, like it will be in NY, MN, or elsewhere.

By the way, 99% reliability is pretty poor for a power company - it should be 99.999% or better to avoid one power failure a week.

I still think we should draft Hawaii to set its clocks ahead in April 1 of this year, then wait and see what happens. Everybody else world wide needs a live test platform - and the big island is pretty expendable with all its volcanoes, seems to me. 8<).

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 15, 1999.

Great idea. If you guys will pay, I volunteer to be stationed in Hawaii and report back to the group by ham radio for, say, 10 years or so?

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 15, 1999.

A friend directed me to Michael Hyatt's site. In the FAQ section, he gives examples of glitches that have already occurred. Apparently Hawaiian Electric went down in Y2k testing last summer. So despite what Cory says (and I'm a Cory fan), HEC is not infallible.

www.michaelhyatt.com

(Please someone link it for us! Thanks)

-- Sue (Sue@dot.com), January 15, 1999.

Regarding the test last summer, the following is from the Cassnadra Project site:

When the Hawaiian Electric utility in Honolulu ran tests on its system to see if it would be affected by the Y2K Bug, "basically, it just stopped working," says systems analyst, Wendell Ito. If the problem had gone unaddressed, not only would some customers have potentially lost power, but others could have got their juice at a higher frequency, in which case, "the clocks would go faster, and some things could blow up," explains Ito.

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), January 15, 1999.

ahem...

http://www.michaelhyatt.com

-- volunteer (beginner@HTML.com), January 15, 1999.

Isn't Cory Hamasaki still over there on his current boondoggle, er, business trip? Maybe we can get a report from our on-the-spot reporter. Could be some interesting insights if it's more than the usual tree on the wires kind of event.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 15, 1999.

Do ya' think he found a sponser to FedEx 'em to HI? 8<)

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 18, 1999.