Posted on: Friday, October 15, 2004
HECO satisfies power demand
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By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Power flowed smoothly to Hawaiian Electric Co.'s 287,000 customers yesterday, one day after the threat of emergency rolling blackouts convinced the public to cut back for a few hours.
But one of the three generators taken out of service Wednesday for unexpected maintenance will not be available for eight weeks, said Jose Dizon, HECO spokesman.
The other two troubled generators — one owned by HECO and the other by Kalaeloa Partners — were repaired Wednesday.
HECO officials had feared that record demand for electricity over the course of several hot days this week would cause a system failure.
Record demands for power have been set four times since Aug. 17 and reached a high mark of 1,327 megawatts Tuesday night. Monday night had seen a record, too: 1,319 megawatts.
HECO's problem was exacerbated by the fact that two other generators were offline for scheduled maintenance. One of them, a HECO generator, will not return until Nov. 2. The other — the city's H-Power unit — should be back in use today, Dizon said.
The O'ahu utility said customer kokua helped it through "a power crunch" Wednesday.
"The crisis with the power plants and the unexpected unscheduled outages (are) over," Dizon said yesterday. "But with the hot weather we are still asking customers to conserve. And it is the right thing to do."
HECO has 16 generators and every unit was running. The utility does not normally use all of its generators at the same time or run them at peak capacity unless there is an emergency, Dizon said.
"We have enough generation to meet the daily demand for electricity," he said. "And we have backup."
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
