After restoring power to Oʻahu, the Hawaiian Electric Co. is turning its attention to the Garden Isle.
It is assisting the Kauaʻi Island Utility Cooperative in the aftermath of Hurricane Lowell after it passed over the westernmost main Hawaiian islands.
HECO Vice President of Communications Jim Kelly spoke with HPR to share the latest update on the outages.
Interview Highlights
On restoring power on Oʻahu and Kauaʻi
JIM KELLY: At the peak we had about 20,000 people out on Oʻahu and then had most people back by early afternoon. …
As we wrapped up the work on Oʻahu, we loaded up some trucks and equipment today, and it's going to be barged over to Kauaʻi and should arrive on Friday. We're going to be putting our crews from Hawaiʻi Island and Maui County and Oʻahu are going to be going over to Kauaʻi as well to support KIUC crews in helping get the restoration moving as quickly as it can.
On preventing future storm damage
KELLY: You don't need to be an engineering Ph.D. to try to come up with an answer to how you address this very clear resilience issue that every island has. So I'm hoping that this is going to be something that gets more conversation going around it and more attention. As we talked about before … all utilities are somewhat limited in how much work they can do taking trees out that are outside of the right of way or the easement that the power lines go through, and I think we're going to have to have some conversations about what else we can do because if you can eliminate the potential for trees falling into power lines and knocking down structures, you're going to eliminate a pretty significant source of the causes of outages that we've been seeing in these storms.
On preparing for the next storm
There's another storm that is lurking out in the ocean, and I think we're all bracing for it being a challenging season. We've done a lot of work just since the last storm, Lala, and now with Lowell, getting everything back up the way it should be. … But it's also on people. They’ve got to be thinking about what they can do in their own homes and businesses to be ready. This is a great example, though. I'm really happy we can work with our colleagues at KIUC, because we do a lot of work together. And this is a great example of Hawaiʻi coming together when there's an issue that needs to be addressed. That we're all, you know, figuring out what it's going to take and then getting it done, and I know we're happy to go over there and help those folks just as they've helped us in the past.
This story aired on The Conversation on Sept. 10, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
