Power is nearly restored across the state following the back-to-back Kona low storms that brought down trees and electric lines. The flooding has also exacerbated the situation as Hawaiian Electric crews work to re-energize the lines.
HPR spoke with Jim Kelly, HECO vice president of government and community relations, and corporate communications. He shared where things currently stand and the challenges still facing crews.
Interview Highlights
On restoring power
KELLY: We are just today working a lot of focus on the North Shore of Oʻahu and getting the final — it's fewer than 100 — customers who were in the flood area — working with electricians. ... I think we're scheduled to put 20 more people back on today. Hopefully, I'm hoping by the end of the day, we can get just about everybody back on for those who don't have, like, more substantial work that has to be done to get them reconnected. So we're at about 90 people right now that are still without power.
On the vulnerability of island power grids
KELLY: When the grid was laid out on Oʻahu a long time ago, the power is generated on the leeward side of the island… and there's three primary transmission lines that go over the mountains, and you can see those when you go over to the windward side. You can see them going over, and that is a point of vulnerability for our island. … And today, if you take an aerial photo of these areas, you could just see that they're completely crowded by albizias, primarily, but a lot of other invasive species that just require constant maintenance. On our part, we spent about $25 million a year on vegetation management to keep trees clear of our lines. But it isn't just the branches falling. It's also, in this last storm we saw, because of the rain, the trees are falling over.
On Hawaiʻi’s energy concerns amid rising oil prices
KELLY: I think the main thing that we're keeping an eye on is the price that we're going to pay. I think we're all hoping for a fairly quick resolution to what's going on over there. The pricing every day goes up, and then it goes down, and then it goes up again. It's really hard for us even to get a trend line going on what the impact might be. Most people would not see any impact to their electric bills, because we're working through a supply right now that we bought a couple months ago. They're not going to see an impact on their bills until late May, early June, with the higher oil prices, which is why, again, as soon as we can, if this could get resolved and we could get the oil prices back lower to where they were before, then the impact is going to be, you know, fairly brief, we hope.
Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island and Maui Nui residents can track Hawaiian Electric power outages here. Kauaʻi residents can track KIUC outages here.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 25, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
