Hawaiian Electric repair crews continued to work overnight after a power outage shut down downtown Honolulu — the second disruption in less than a week to affect the area.
The outage, which resulted from underground power cables and equipment getting damaged in a fire Monday night, initially affected around 3,000 customers in the Chinatown area, Hawaiian Electric said. However, the utility said late Tuesday that its crews had made significant progress restoring power at 9:10 p.m. to 2,400 customers, and that the estimated time for the restoration of power to the remaining 600 customers is 6 p.m. today.
Hawaiian Electric said its crews would continue to work through the night and that they would rotate in shifts so the restoration work could continue until the repairs are complete and the service restored.
The utility said earlier in the day that the fire damage was “extensive and will require lengthy and complex repairs that need to be done in a restricted space below the street.”
“The fire burned four underground circuits, comprised of a total of 12 underground high-voltage cables, in the area between the intersection of King and Bethel streets and King and Alakea streets,” officials said in a news release.
The outage is the second in less than a week in the downtown-Chinatown area, after an outage most of Thursday affecting 900 customer accounts shut down traffic signals, office buildings, condominiums and government buildings including the state Capitol. Officials said that Thursday’s outage resulted “from a sequence of events that started at approximately 9:30 p.m.” June 12 with an outage in the area between Bishop and Mililani streets. The next day, equipment at the Iwilei substation “experienced an overload of power” that caused the broader outage.
Hawaiian Electric spokesperson Darren Pai said that “there’s nothing definitively tying the two (outages) together” at this point but that investigations are ongoing.
“The outages from last week and today were in different parts of downtown. They involve different circuits on the system, so they’re both kind of generally in the downtown area,” Pai said. “There’s nothing definitive at this point that indicates that they’re connected to each other.”
Pai said ransomware is not a possible factor behind the outages.
Scattered intersections throughout the downtown area were affected, according to the city Department of Transportation Services. Honolulu Police Department officers directed traffic at major intersections.
Alex Le, general manager of The Pig and the Lady on North King Street, said the restaurant was forced to cancel upward of 400 reservations Thursday and an additional 500 reservations following Tuesday’s closure.
“On Thursday we closed because the estimate was 11:30 (a.m.) to restore power, and then that didn’t happen. Then it was 12, then 2, and we were like, ‘OK.’ We ultimately made the decision to close, and that was a huge financial loss for us,” Le said. “To have this happen twice in five days is really crazy.”
After power was restored Thursday night, The Pig and the Lady continued its operations as normal Friday and Saturday. The restaurant is closed every Sunday and Monday, and Le said Tuesdays are the biggest days of the week for the business.
“It’s really frustrating, but what can you do? Everyone’s in the same boat here in downtown,” Le said. “We’re communicating with the other restaurants, and we’re all in this together. It’s just unfortunate for everyone who lives and works in the downtown area, for the last five days.”
Small businesses and restaurants like The Pig and the Lady typically don’t have backup power units in the event of outages that some offices or apartment buildings in the area have.
“Hopefully, it gets fixed, and there’s a total possibility that it could happen this week again. (The power system) just sounds like it’s super vulnerable, and I don’t know what to do,” Le said. “We really love what we do, and making sure that everyone has a good experience (at our restaurant) is always our goal.”
State Sen. Karl Rhoads (D, Nuuanu-Downtown-Iwilei), who lives in the Chinatown area, said the building he lives in was affected by Thursday’s outage but was fine Tuesday.
“Not having electricity is a big problem, especially if you live in a 40-story tower like I do,” Rhoads said. “It’s more than a minor inconvenience. If you’re trying to run a store that requires electricity, which is just about everybody, you lose a day of business. I’m very sympathetic, and I’m sure the HECO guys understand they need to fix it as quick as they can.”
Rhoads said downtown Honolulu doesn’t have a history of a high frequency of power outages, or that power outages are an issue the area faces any more than other areas on the island.
“Multiple (outages) in a short period of time is very unusual. I don’t think it’s a particular problem that’s affected downtown or Chinatown more than anywhere else,” Rhoads said. “I certainly hope it’s resolved soon, for everybody’s sake. The pressure’s on for HECO. They’re getting a bunch of complaints, and rightfully so, so they need to get a fix as soon as they possibly can.”
The state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates public utility companies statewide, said it will seek information from Hawaiian Electric to investigate the outages.
“The PUC has broad regulatory authority over Hawaiian Electric and will seek further details from Hawaiian Electric to investigate the root cause of today’s and last Thursday’s downtown power outage,” Deborah Kwan, PUC communications officer, wrote in a statement to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “After Hawaiian Electric provides complete and accurate information on the cause of the outages, the PUC will ask for and evaluate Hawaiian Electric’s plans for preventive measures.”
Pai said that the incidents over the past week have expedited existing Hawaiian Electric plans to address service reliability in the downtown area.
“We understand how disruptive this has been for our customers. We know that a lot goes on in the downtown area,” Pai said. “In the short term, we are doing equipment upgrades at our Iwilei substation, which connects to a lot of the circuits that provide power to downtown, so that will provide more redundancy and more reliability.”
Additionally, Pai said Hawaiian Electric will “accelerate the process of replacing and upgrading the underground power cables downtown.”
Most of downtown is served by a network of underground cables that run below the streets — a network originally built in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the company. While sections have been updated and maintained, most of the original cables are still in service.
“It’s going to require a lot of planning, a lot of engineering, a lot of coordination with our customers, so this is going to take place over multiple years,” Pai said.
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