Hawaiian Electric urged Hawaiʻi Island customers to conserve energy last week to avoid rolling blackouts.
Hawaiʻi Island has had an "extremely" tight supply of energy over the last few weeks after HECO's independent power producer, Hamakua Energy Partners, went offline. The plant generates roughly a third of the island's total energy.
Hawaiʻi Sens. Glenn Wakai, Lynn DeCoite and Jarrett Keohokalole sent a letter to the Public Utilities Commission on April 16 expressing concerns about grid reliability on the Big Island. The lawmakers asked the PUC to look into the issue, as well as recent weather-related outages and energy shortfalls on Oʻahu.
HECO CEO Shelee Kimura gave an update on the repairs to the Hamakua Energy plant last Thursday before the Senate Committee on Commerce and Consumer Protection and the Committee on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs, which Keohokalole and Wakai respectively chair.
Kimura said that a replacement unit had arrived on island and that Hamakua Energy was working to get it installed at the plant.
Without Hamakua Energy, Hawaiʻi Island's remaining power plants have been straining to meet the demand for energy.
"Our units are old," Kimura said, "They're not supposed to run every single day that hard. If you do that, then they're going to start to deteriorate."
Kimura added that HECO takes the responsibility of providing reliable power to the community "very seriously." She called the situation on Hawaiʻi Island a "significant outlier" in HECO's grid reliability planning.
