When I moved to Hilo in 1994, people told us about the rolling blackouts that kept occurring on the Big Island due to antiquated power systems. We built our house off the grid, partly because we wanted to, and partly because the power company wanted to charge us $60,000 to run power 1/2 mile to the property. I had fantasies of looking at a blacked-out Hilo town across the Bay while listening to the stereo or watching a movie.

Then they improved the Big Island power system, and meanwhile I had to deal with power outages all the time: forgetting to get gasoline for the generator, generator breaking down, inverter set wrong, generator breaking down again, gecko climbing into the highly sophisticated and expensive Trace inverter and electrocuting itself while wiping out the highly sensitive field effect transistors, running out of gas again, generator running low on oil and shutting down, inverter still set wrong, replacement inverter going haywire because it was defective, generator throwing a rod and nearly doing me in in the process, etc., etc., etc.   It was certainly an adventure.

I'm still trying to figure out why a system that is specfically designed to even out power demands collapses like a house of cards when something like this happens.

You're right, Nicole...there couldn't possibly be any irresponsible energy-wasting people in the Northeast!

Aloha,
Mark