Power To The People

I was at a restaurant in Keauhou for a birthday dinner for a friend. I rember this restaurant used to be a Wendy’s fast food place many years ago but closed as I think the franchisee was not as active as they could be in managing, but that is just a guess. The view was one of the best for any Wendys I would think as it looked out over the Pacific with a great view to the north, west and south. It was converted and became a Sam Choy restaurant for may years with many signature dishes from the famous Pacific-Fusion Chef. He was often on site.

Then of late it changed hands but still has that great view.

So as our small group celebrated the birthday, we looked out over the Pacific at the hazy horizon. Hawaii is experiencing a major storm which includes in various places, heavy rain and flooding, thunderstorms (not a very common thing here) and terrific wind gusts.

The shopping center and this particular restaurant rely upon solar for electricity seemed to work fine as 1 hour into our lunch, power was lost to our side of the island. We were clueless. I don’t yet know whether power was lost due to a failure to generate, or an accident which can take down power when poles come down. I suspect that it was shut off because of the wind. After the Maui fires, the utility ai being pro-active in shutting down power now to avoid electricity causing wild fires. These electrical causes seem to be more prevalent of late.

The power seems to have gone down at about 150pm and as I drove home around 2:30 I noticd all the traffic lights off and that meand intersections become 4-way stops. That worked quite well and smoothly but I did see polic at a few busy interections managing or at least monitoring the traffic flow.

I had two Amazon packages delivered to the Post Office today however  as they are Amazon orders, I have to pick them up inside where they are scanned as picked up. Since the Post Office is not on solar, the lobby is closed, so I’ll have to go on Friday. Those packages include some grounding clamps and some mounting brackets for the solar panels and other items.

I arrived home and even though it was overcast here I was still generating power from my solar panels. Lights were working but because the Internet was down I used my cellphone data plan to listen to the radio and watch a bit of TV on the Pluto TV app. Then, since I had stuffed myself at lunchs, it seems I dozed off and woke at just before 7pm. I checked some security cameras I have access to and it appears the total electrical outage from the utility was just over 4 hours. At this time I guess it was a forced outage by the utility, however I will see what the reports are later.

At 7:30pm I am only down to 87% on the batteries and will easily coast through the night never having lost power on my setup. I still have that last battery to hook up, but there is no rush as it will take the better part of a day to disconenct things move them and restore the batteries in their new location and rack.

Tomorrow is another great day for shopping. Our Safeway has $5 Friday specials and tomorrow has two great deals. The first is 8 piece fried chicken for $5 and the other deal is what we feel is better. It is top sirloin steaks for $5 a pound, which is about 1/2 price. I usually buy two or three packages, put one in the fridge and the other in the freezer for later. Yes it is sometimes not the greatest to have to eat a couple pounds of steak in a week, but I’ll survive. As you may know, the best way to prepare a steak such as this is to pan fry it in butter with a spice of some sort. Mostly I use a packaged steak seasoning as I rarely have fresh herbs here nor know which ones are best or how to use them. That is why we have large companys to decide for us.