On August 17th 1993, the Ives Dairy Substation in Miami, Florida experienced a total system failure. It started with the simple failure of a capacitor bank (a piece of equipment used to regulate power spikes and momentary drops coming off the main power grid in to one smooth consistent electrical current before being distributed to customers). Unlike a Transformer (which will increase or decrease the amount of voltage put in to it by a percentage) a Capacitor is like a bucket with a faucet. The bucket part of the capacitor can hold a certain amount of incoming power like a buffer, while the faucet part of the capacitor will only let a precise amount of power through. This way, as other cities pull more power from the grid and then drop their usage over and over, all this constant fluctuation of the grid is smoothed out by the capacitor banks before the electricity gets sent out to customers. Without it, peoples home electronics would be turning off or dimming one second, and the next second a bunch of people in another city would turn off their air conditioners (or what have you) and that sudden surplus of power on the grid would then fry your computer or TV or burn out your light bulbs, etc. By running the power through those capacitors, there's a place for excess power to go and a place to draw power from (the bucket), while the output (faucet) only lets the correct amount of power through. So anyway, a huge power surge on the Miami grid fried one of the capacitor banks <b>...</b>

On August 17th 1993, the Ives Dairy Substation in Miami, Florida experienced a total system failure. It started with the simple failure of a capacitor bank (a piece of equipment used to regulate power spikes and momentary drops coming off the main power grid in to one smooth consistent electrical current before being distributed to customers). Unlike a Transformer (which will increase or decrease the amount of voltage put in to it by a percentage) a Capacitor is like a bucket with a faucet. The bucket part of the capacitor can hold a certain amount of incoming power like a buffer, while the faucet part of the capacitor will only let a precise amount of power through. This way, as other cities pull more power from the grid and then drop their usage over and over, all this constant fluctuation of the grid is smoothed out by the capacitor banks before the electricity gets sent out to customers. Without it, peoples home electronics would be turning off or dimming one second, and the next second a bunch of people in another city would turn off their air conditioners (or what have you) and that sudden surplus of power on the grid would then fry your computer or TV or burn out your light bulbs, etc. By running the power through those capacitors, there's a place for excess power to go and a place to draw power from (the bucket), while the output (faucet) only lets the correct amount of power through. So anyway, a huge power surge on the Miami grid fried one of the capacitor banks <b>...</b>