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Raising Cane Rob Perez |
Big Isle blackout inquiry
finally sputters to a closeTwelve years ago, Big Island residents were having so many problems with electrical outages and rolling blackouts that the state began a formal investigation into the reliability of the power system there.
It was an extensive probe involving several companies, an industry association, the state consumer advocate's office and a battery of lawyers. The Public Utilities Commission held nine hearings on the Big Island and Oahu to gather evidence and take testimony on the reliability -- or lack thereof -- of the Hawaii Electric Light Co. system.
Hundreds of pages of documents and data were compiled. Expenses in the case easily totaled tens of thousands of dollars. Critical questions were raised by regulators, such as what steps should the PUC take to ensure sufficient reliability of the HELCO system and whether the utility should be sanctioned for the blackout problem.
After all the effort and expense, the commission finally wrapped up the case a few weeks ago, issuing a three-page order.
The panel's conclusion after a dozen years?
The information in the case had become so old and stale that it no longer was reliable. Because of that, the commission determined that it "would no longer be viable, beneficial and in the public interest" to continue the investigation. Instead, it closed the case without reaching any conclusions or addressing any issues raised in the investigation, according to the April 24 order.
The failure of the commission to properly handle such an important case was in stark contrast to how the panel dealt with another major power fiasco involving Hawaiian Electric Co., the parent of HELCO.
In 1991, the same year the PUC began the HELCO reliability probe, the commission opened an investigation into the April 1991 islandwide power outage on Oahu. The outage cut power for up to 12 hours to thousands of residential and business customers of HECO.
To jump-start the Oahu investigation, the PUC approved the hiring of an independent consultant -- at HECO's expense -- to determine what caused the outage and to make recommendations about what the utility could do to improve its system reliability and prevent a similar mishap.
Once the consultant's report was completed in 1993, the company regularly updated the commission over the next several years on what it was doing to implement the report's 109 recommendations.
By the time the PUC closed the case in July 1999, the major questions raised at the investigation's onset had been answered and detailed in the commission's final order; most of the consultant's recommendations had been implemented; and the agency required HECO to provide annual reports on the status of the remaining recommendations.
That was a case marked by definitive action on the commission's part.
The Big Island case, on the other hand, was puzzling because of the commission's inaction. Why did the matter get such little attention after the flurry of activity in the first year or two? Until the commission's final order of April 24, the last substantive documents filed in the case were from the mid-1990s.
It's difficult to determine why the Oahu investigation proceeded to a logical conclusion while the Big Island case lay dormant for so long. The man who headed the commission for much of the 1990s, Yukio Naito, is dead, and the current commission members and key administrators weren't with the agency when those cases were active.
Kris Nakagawa, the PUC's chief legal counsel, said two investigations can move in different directions for a variety of reasons, including how contentious the cases are. But because he didn't join the agency until 1999, Nakagawa didn't know why the outcomes in the Big Island and Oahu cases were so different.
Michael Matsukawa, a Big Island attorney, believes the reason has to do with geography.
"When things happen on Oahu, government agencies pay attention," Matsukawa said. "On the neighbor islands there's this perception -- in large part backed up by actual events -- that maybe we get second-class treatment."
Because the commission dropped the Big Island case without reaching any conclusions, does that mean the hearings were essentially a waste of time and money?
"It wasn't a total waste but it was largely a waste," said Chuck Totto, who served as the state's consumer advocate for much of the '90s and participated in the hearings.
Without a sufficient resolution to the case, consumers don't get answers to some important questions, Totto said. While some of the reliability issues were addressed in other HELCO cases before the commission -- information that utility executives, PUC officials and other insiders would know -- it's not easy for the public to learn which questions were answered and which weren't, he said.
"All in all, it shortchanges the utility consumers and the taxpayers," Totto said. "Nobody really gets a sense of what we found out from this process."
But the PUC's Nakagawa, a HECO spokesman and the state's current consumer advocate believe the process was beneficial despite its inconclusive ending.
"What the hearings did was make it real clear that it was critical to solve the (rolling blackout) problem -- and we did," said Chuck Freedman, a HECO executive. "Not every hearing has to have a yes-or-no outcome. A hearing can serve as a catalyst for action."
Nakagawa also noted that the commission continues to regularly monitor HELCO's system reliability. "It's not like once a docket is opened and closed, that means (the process) comes to a complete halt," he said.
In the wake of the hearings, HELCO got additional generation capacity on line and reached agreements with large customers to reduce their power needs, all measures that helped resolve the blackout problem in fairly short order.
The Big Island investigation was one of a number of cases that had been unresolved for at least a decade and that the commission has been trying to close in the past couple years. Nakagawa said the PUC's new chairman, Carlito Caliboso, wants the commission to handle matters on a more timely basis.
The problem of cases going unresolved for so long and the difficulty the public has in getting information from the PUC were among reasons cited by legislators this year in unanimously passing a bill calling for a management audit of the commission. The bill is awaiting Gov. Linda Lingle's signature.
Sen. Kalani English, a Senate sponsor of the measure, said the Big Island case is indicative of an agency badly in need of an overhaul, especially given its limited resources and wide array of regulatory responsibility.
"It's an arcane organization and one that needs to be modernized and needs to be responsive and needs to be accountable," English said. "A 12-year docket is unacceptable."
Allowing a reliability investigation to languish for 12 years and then die out because of concerns about unreliable data is not just unacceptable, but raises questions about the reliability of the PUC itself.
That management audit is long overdue.
Star-Bulletin columnist Rob Perez writes on issues
and events affecting Hawaii. Fax 529-4750, or write to
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu 96813. He can also be reached
by e-mail at: rperez@starbulletin.com.