WAIPAHU, Hawaii (KHON2) — Preventing power outages by turning off enhanced safety features is what Hawaiian Electric is doing in several neighborhoods on Oahu to stop underground power lines from faulting and shutting off electricity.
Hawaiian Electric said recent safety upgrades to reduce the risk of wildfires have left some underground lines in Waipio and Waipahu a bit touchy.
“And essentially makes those circuits more sensitive to these kinds of disruptions and triggers outages whenever it will sense something that that could result in a problem,” Hawaiian Electric spokesperson Darren Pai said.
Pai said the decades-old lines were affected after recent heavy rains.
“Water can seep in,” Pai said. “That results in these faults that caused the outages.”
Residents reported up to eight outages to us within the last month in Waipio and it is just an inconvenience for most.
“But as far as elderly, yeah. People who rely on medical stuff, I would think that would be a problem. That’s a concern, definitely,” part-time Waipio resident Markus Mullins said.
Hawaiian Electric officials said they are working on long-term upgrades to the underground lines, but they are simply shutting the enhanced wildfire safety features off in Waipio and Waipahu.
“Because the area is largely underground, the risk of ignition from an overhead source is somewhat mitigated,” Pai said. “So, we’re going to disable these wildfire safety settings in the interim to reduce the frequency of these outages.”
Some residents said that is a tad concerning.
“Just because it’s not a fire-prone area doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take the fire risk seriously,” Mullins said.
KHON2 asked if there is a timeline for switching off the features in Waipio and Waipahu.
“We’re going to start doing that in Waipio-Waipahu right away. This did occur in Mililani a couple of months ago, and we took similar steps there as well,” Pai said.
Officials add these faults mostly occur in older underground lines — newer ones are encased in concrete. Hawaiian Electric is also reviewing other neighborhoods to determine if the enhanced wildfire safety features need to be shut off anywhere else.
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June 07, 2024 at 09:55AM
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Hawaiian Electric disables some safety features to prevent outages - KHON2
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