More than 25,500 Hawaiian Electric customers on the Big Island temporarily lost power Tuesday after the energy provider implemented a series of rolling outages.
The measure was necessary in order to cover an energy shortfall in the power grid after three generators unexpectedly failed Tuesday morning, said Hawaiian Electric spokeswoman Kristen Okinaka.
At the same time, Hawaiian Electric’s largest energy producer, Hamakua Energy, currently is operating at reduced capacity during ongoing repairs. Okinaka said that producer usually generates about 60 megawatts of power, but is currently providing only about 20.
“On top of that, we had basically no wind resource,” Okinaka said. “It was a combination of a lot of factors, really.”
Okinaka said the outages took place throughout the island between 8:38 a.m. and 10:52 a.m. Tuesday, and ranged from 30 minutes and 60 minutes long. The locations and durations of the outages were determined based on how much grid energy needed to be conserved at any given time.
One outage in the morning affected much of downtown Hilo and left 1,037 customers without power, according to the Hawaiian Electric website. Concurrently, another outage around Pahoa impacted another 1,000 customers, while one in Keaukaha affected more than 700.
Okinaka on Tuesday afternoon said the energy shortfall had been resolved and further outages shouldn’t be necessary.
“The good news is, we’ve been able to bring the three turbines back online,” Okinaka said.
Tuesday’s outages were unrelated to a generator fire that took place Monday evening, Okinaka added. That incident, at the Panaewa Substation, caused approximately $1.5 million in damage, according to a Hawaii Fire Department report.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
