Honda Generators, 34 Minutes at the Super Bowl and Extreme Weather Outages
With the cost of commercials aired during the Super Bowl pitting the San Francisco 49'ers against the Baltimore Ravens running between $3.7 and $3.8 million per spot, one of the best advertisements for Honda generators came as a freebie. With a little over 1 minute elapsed in the third quarter, the Superdome experienced an event never seen before at a Super Bowl; a blackout. This blackout wasn't a short one either, lasting approximately 34 minutes during which players and fans idled and CBS scrambled to fill air time.
The irony of the blackout, as Entergy New Orleans revealed a few days later, is that the blackout was caused by a piece of equipment specifically designed to prevent a power failure. The device, referred to as a "relay", had been incorporated into the electrical system at the Superdome to prevent a power failure in the transfer of electricity from inbound lines to the lines that power the stadium. The relay gear has since been replaced.
Less than a week later, the blizzard named "Nemo" barreled into New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts with hurricane force winds and snowfall of up to three feet. In a region that is still dealing with damages from Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012, the Nor'easter delayed thousands of flights, brought coastal flooding and caused over 600,000 customers to lose power. While power had been restored within 24 hours to approximately half of the customers that had been blacked out, the prognosis by local utilities forecasted that thousands of customers would not have power for approximately a week.
While the outage at the Super Bowl can be categorized as an inconvenience, the second extended outage for the New York/New England area in three and a half months should serve as a reminder that relying on power from the grid is a risk that can bear significant consequences. In both cases, the lesson is that power outages never occur at right time and often occur at the worst time possible. Fortunately, mitigating these risks is as easy as putting in a backup power source from the extensive line of Honda generators. Whether you need to keep a couple of appliances running in your home or power a business, a portable or a standby generator can make the difference between waiting days for the lights to come back on and taking control of your essential power requirements. For more information, visit: http://www.generator-hph.com
The irony of the blackout, as Entergy New Orleans revealed a few days later, is that the blackout was caused by a piece of equipment specifically designed to prevent a power failure. The device, referred to as a "relay", had been incorporated into the electrical system at the Superdome to prevent a power failure in the transfer of electricity from inbound lines to the lines that power the stadium. The relay gear has since been replaced.
Less than a week later, the blizzard named "Nemo" barreled into New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts with hurricane force winds and snowfall of up to three feet. In a region that is still dealing with damages from Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012, the Nor'easter delayed thousands of flights, brought coastal flooding and caused over 600,000 customers to lose power. While power had been restored within 24 hours to approximately half of the customers that had been blacked out, the prognosis by local utilities forecasted that thousands of customers would not have power for approximately a week.
While the outage at the Super Bowl can be categorized as an inconvenience, the second extended outage for the New York/New England area in three and a half months should serve as a reminder that relying on power from the grid is a risk that can bear significant consequences. In both cases, the lesson is that power outages never occur at right time and often occur at the worst time possible. Fortunately, mitigating these risks is as easy as putting in a backup power source from the extensive line of Honda generators. Whether you need to keep a couple of appliances running in your home or power a business, a portable or a standby generator can make the difference between waiting days for the lights to come back on and taking control of your essential power requirements. For more information, visit: http://www.generator-hph.com