The Conversation

'Cable fault' caused downtown power outage, HECO says

Hawaiʻi Public Radio | By Catherine Cruz

Published June 28, 2024 at 2:37 PM HST

Skull-Face Books and Vinyl, a bookstore located on Bethel Street, was open during a multi-day power outage in the area. It had no lights or air conditioning and could not accept credit card payments during the outage. (June 20, 2045 — Skull-Face Books and Vinyl, a bookstore located on Bethel Street, was open during a multi-day power outage in the area. It had no lights or air conditioning and could not accept credit card payments during the outage. (June 20, 2024)

Jim Kelly, vice president for Hawaiian Electric Co., shared the suspected cause of the recent power outages in downtown Honolulu.

HECO is expected to file a preliminary report with the Public Utilities Commission to provide information regarding the cause of the outage.

HECO has blamed the failure on a "cable fault."

Jacob Carreira, general manager of Skull-Face Books and Vinyl on Bethel Street, sits outside the building with the doors open so potential customers know the store is open during an extended power outage in the Chinatown area. (June 20, 2024)

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"There's a lot of different pieces of equipment under the street, splices and cable insulation and other equipment that we're going to have to look at to try to get at, ʻOK, well, why did that cable fault happen?' and making sure that we have an understanding of that and make sure it doesn't happen again," Kelly said.

HECO has a program dating back to the 2010s where they've been upgrading underground equipment.

"In Chinatown, downtown, the underground utilities some of them go back to the 1950s so there's a lot of equipment that was installed '50s, '60s, '70s," Kelly said. "And so over time, we've been replacing that, upgrading that, and over the last, since the 2010s, we probably got about 25% of that replaced."

This interview aired on The Conversation on June 28, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.