Advocate seeks probe into power failures

HECO presents its explanation of events at a public meeting

The state's consumer advocate has called on the Public Utilities Commission to open a formal investigation into the cause of, and response to, the islandwide power failure following the Oct. 15 earthquakes off the Big Island.

Calls for an investigation come as Hawaiian Electric Co. is attempting to explain directly to the public what happened on that day.

"We all make mistakes," said Kailua resident Roger Wickenden, one of about a dozen members of the public who attended a public meeting held by HECO yesterday afternoon at the state Capitol auditorium.

"We can learn from those mistakes -- we should be learning from those mistakes -- but if we don't acknowledge that we've made mistakes, then we won't learn from them."

PUC Chairman Carlito Caliboso has said he would hold informal briefings before deciding whether to open a formal investigation.

But consumer advocate Catherine Awakuni said her office planned to conduct its own independent investigation, and called on Caliboso to do the same.

"While we appreciate the efforts by the HECO companies to our office and the commission with detailed information about the outages, we still have many detailed questions to ask and more investigative work to conduct to determine whether HECO acted reasonably and on the public interest," Awakuni said yesterday. "We believe that such investigative work can only be done effectively in a formalized process, since a regulatory schedule can be established, discovery can be conducted and witness testimonies can be taken under oath."

HECO officials presented the PUC last week with a preliminary report on the outages, saying power had to be restored gradually after the quakes to prevent extensive damage to the system, and that two Oahu units shut down by operators did not cause the islandwide blackout.

The utility made the same presentation to the public yesterday.

HECO officials say they also are conducting an investigation with the goal of presenting a full report to the PUC by the end of the year.

"We're sharing with you the facts of what we know," HECO spokesman Robbie Alm told the audience, which included officials from public-interest and advocacy groups. "One of the challenges is we don't know why some of those facts occurred."

While some people raised questions about technical aspects of HECO's operations, others said they simply wanted answers in plain English the next time a significant outage occurs.

"I was thinking to myself, What do I know about Kahe I and Kahe II?" said Moiliili resident Martha Shirai, referring to HECO's Kahe generating plants, which have been referred to in explaining the outages.

"I believe that the public's first concern is, When am I going to get my electricity restored?" she said. "Therefore, I think that if you had something written in layman's language, it might help."

She suggested that HECO do a better job in the future of explaining which areas typically come back online first.

After the Oct. 15 earthquakes, power was restored to Central and Leeward areas first, before portions of East Oahu.

Alm said after the meeting that the utility could have been clearer in telling residents which areas would come back online first, meaning "power restoration starts around the power plants, major substations and moves west to east. Then, particularly those in East Honolulu would've known that they would be (restored) later on, and they could've probably understood that."