HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaiian Electric instituted rolling outages on Oahu on Monday night amid power generation issues, plunging entire communities into darkness for 30-minute periods.
HECO said the outages were needed to avoid larger problems.
The outages started in the Nuuanu area at 8 p.m. and moved across the island. They ended about 10:30 p.m.
Heavy rains batter Oahu, flooding roads and triggering power outages
HECO officials said they made the rare decision to institute the outages — amid drenching rains across the island — after two large generating units at Waiau Power Plant went offline on Monday afternoon.
They added that because of the heavy rains, production from solar energy systems had also been reduced and battery energy storage systems were not able to charge to full capacity.
Jim Kelly, vice president of government, community relations and corporate communications for HECO, apologized for the outages — calling them an “extraordinary step.”
The outages were dramatic and came with little warning.
During the outages, traffic lights went out amid the driving rain.
It wasn’t clear how emergency authorities were informed of the plan, but HECO did say large power users were alerted in advance and urged to conserve electricity in a bid to stave off the outages. It didn’t work.
“Due to insufficient generation, earlier this evening Hawaiian Electric began ‘load shedding,’ a process of systematically disconnecting customers in various areas around the island, as part of a predetermined sequence under the company’s emergency procedures,” the utility said, in a news release.
“The targeted emergency outages are necessary to avoid a more widespread outage or damage to the electric system from an imbalance of too much demand versus too little available generation.”
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