Mayday, Mayday, Mayday: Complete Systems Failure!

The weather in Hawai’i lately has not been cooperating with our image of tropical paradise. Heavy rains, high winds, flooding and hurricanes have raised havoc on our beautiful islands. During Hurricane Lala, some O’ahu residents experienced Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) power outages that lasted four or more days. This is unprecedented. It was reported that 60% of Hawaiian Electric lost power during the storm.
 
To make things worse, several older high-rise buildings experienced complete electrical system failures that left them without power for days after electric service was restored to the area. It is one thing to lose power to a single-family residence for four days. Most people can survive a four-day outage with flashlights, gas grills, and eating out. Yes, food in the refrigerator and freezer will likely spoil, although there is at least one reported incident where the resident did not open the freezer or refrigerator for the entire outage and the ice cream did not even melt. Move this scenario to a high-rise building, however, and it is quite a different story.
 
Melted Ice Cream Is the Least of Your Worries
Whether it be a hotel or a residential high-rise building, there are serious implications to an internal catastrophic power outage. Emergency systems are usually designed around a 90-minute run time. The expectation is that the building will be evacuated and there is a 90-minute window to do that. That means there may only be enough fuel to run the generator for a few hours. The batteries in the fire alarm system and emergency systems may only last a couple of hours. After this window, the building will completely shut down. Technically, the building should not be occupied after these systems shut down. That means there is no water pressure to reach the upper floors. There is no way to cook food. There are no elevators, so a trip to the store or restaurant means a long walk down and back up the stairs. The parking gates will not operate. The security system will be down. A catastrophic power outage in a high-rise building of any type is certainly something to avoid.
 
This Is Not Likely to Happen to My Building, Is It?
Hurricane Lala shattered our false sense of security on O’ahu. O’ahu has not had a major power outage since 2006, when a minor earthquake caused a chain reaction and shut down power to the entire island. That outage was restored in about eight hours. It’s rather easy to endure an eight-hour outage. However, Hurricane Lala not only managed to knock down enough power lines to cause 60% of HECO’s customers to lose power, but also managed to blow water into several buildings’ power supplies and caused them to literally blow up.
 
In addition to water damage, the successive on-off cycles of the HECO power supply caused at least two customer transformers to short out and catch fire. In these instances, HECO power was restored quickly, but building power was off for many days. One property that lost a transformer managed to shift load to another transformer and was only partially without power for four days. It was the long hours and nearly heroic efforts of the team of electricians that came to the rescue that kept this outage to four days. Imagine being here on your dream vacation and not having power for four days. Now imagine the claims being made for refunds.
 
Another building had a catastrophic internal power failure. This one did explode, but fortunately there was no fire. Water found its way into the main power bus that fed the entire building. The explosion happened in a different place than where the moisture entered the system. So, at first, the failure seemed coincidental to the storm. However, further investigation revealed a hole in the caulking of a metal shield that kept the main power bus out of the weather. Normal rains did not affect the system. But the water from Hurricane Lala shorted out the bus and caused a weak spot in the system to explode. Again, it was the quick and decisive efforts of a team of engineers and electricians that designed a solution to bypass the main bus and restore the power in four days.
 
Nothing Lasts Forever
It is easy to enjoy the benefits of electricity and forget that older systems are simply wearing out. Sure, there are limited moving parts to wear out, but the constant heat generated by 40 – 60 years of reliably supplying power tends to break down the insulation. This makes the equipment vulnerable to failure when HECO goes down and comes back up. Add to that some water infiltration and BOOM, the building goes dark. Additionally, when the power is out for an extended time, the electrical components tend to draw in moisture as they cool. This adds to the risk of another BOOM when the power comes back on.
 
Is There Any Hope?
Electrical systems are designed to last 50 years. If a building is over 50 years old, the electrical system has the potential to fail spectacularly. How soon is impossible to tell. The life of the system is proven to be considerably shortened by the stresses that severe weather events impose on them. Ignoring an old electrical system is like playing Russian Roulette. Water is like Kryptonite to an electrical system. Water intrusion issues must be addressed immediately. It is not an option to ignore leaks. If the choice is made to kick the can down the road, at some point luck will run out and BOOM, doom and darkness prevail.
 
Every building 30 years old and older should have an assessment done of the electrical system. Year 45 is a perfect time to start planning for replacement. If a building’s electrical system has not been assessed by a qualified professional engineer, now is the time to do it. Delaying addressing an aging electrical system will definitely have more consequences than melted ice cream.