Courtesy of: Duane Shimogawa

Reporter- Pacific Business News

Hawaiian Electric Co. said it planned to conduct rolling outages in various areas of Oahu Monday evening in response to the loss of several generating units, including the largest on the island operated by independent power producer, AES, which required it to briefly shut off power for about 10 minutes earlier in the day. The targeted emergency outages, which were scheduled to happen between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the Nuuanu-School Street area, all of Hawaii Kai and sections of Waimanalo and Kahala; from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. for most of Waipahu, sections of Pearl City, Kunia, Ewa Beach, Waiawa, Crestview and sections of Mililani; and from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. for Pearl City, Waimalu, Waialua and Kuilima, were needed to avoid a more widespread outage or damage to the grid, Hawaiian Electric said. The outage earlier on Monday happened after a 180-megawatt power plant run by AES in West Oahu unexpectedly went down. Additionally, the Kalaeloa Power Plant in West Oahu, another independent power producer, has been generating less than half of its maximum output of 208 megawatts as it goes through repairs. Hawaiian Electric’s generating units at the Kahe Power Plant in West Oahu, which normally produces 135 megawatts, also was offline after it unexpectedly experienced problems Monday morning. The Honolulu-based utility asked Oahu customers to help with the situation by conserving power use during the evening hours on Monday, especially between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. Hawaiian Electric also asked its larger commercial customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use.