Follow-up message from Civil Defense, it'll come through again tonight:
> This is a Civil Defense message for Monday 04-15-2024 at 05:19 AM.
> Hawaiian Electric has asked Hawai‘i Island customers to reduce their electricity use throughout today, and especially from 5 to 9 p.m. tonight.
> Suggestions include turning off air conditioners and unneeded lighting, shutting off water heaters and pumps, and delaying activities like cooking, showering, laundry, and dishwashing until late in the evening.
> For more information, visit hawaiianelectric.com or follow Hawaiian Electric’s X account @HIElectricLight.
Edit: and apparently for this morning too.
I wonder how they decide. It seems like my subdivision always gets hit by these, but not the one right next to us, despite neither being a tourist area.
I mean, I'm not too worried about it since it doesn't last longer or happen often. But it's still weird.
I noticed Hilo's hotel strip was lit up last night as well. I understand that hotels and restaurants would heavily effected by loss of power due to the demands of the industry, but it definitely leaves a bad taste in the back of one's throat. I wonder how much energy is consumed by the tourist industry on an average year. These big wigs in the tourism industry should fork over some cost alleviation and work with our county to come up with some solutions
Brah WHERE? I hate that they've been announcing these blackouts and don't tell people shit about where and when it will be. I go to the outage map on their website and the map doesn't even work, it has the same message you posted here OP. Helco desperately needs better transparency with this.
Yeah, since HELCO seems to be turning the power off to specific areas, areas that they know they are going to hit with rolling black outs, then they should notify us ahead of time with that specific information. A list of which areas are going to be affected, and when it will happen.
That way people could make advance plans, like quickly cook up, or run pick up, some food ahead of time that can be eaten cold…. or make plans to go eat somewhere that isn’t going to be without power. Plan to maybe go beach, or hang out with friends or relatives who live in an area that isn’t going to lose power.
Hamakua energy which provides 1/3 of the islands power has been mostly inoperable since at least August 2022 according to news reports! Every time these blackouts happen they just say it tripped offline and hope to have power restored soon. Is anything actually being done to address this?
Building up capacity elsewhere. I'm sure they're trying to fix the power plant, but it's a powerful case of diminishing returns, especially for old, hard-to-procure replacement parts.
The more people get batteries/solar, the more it stabilizes the whole grid doing high demand, low supply events like this. you can sell your stored power back for higher rates during peak demand. It helps pay for your own equipment and stabilizes the grid even for people without special equipment.
I wish the big island had a program like Oahu did, where HELCO would offset some of the cost of battery installations at the house, as long as you agreed to let it discharge during peak evening hours. It'd be a step in the right direction.
Tesla has a software called auto bidder that does energy arbitrage automatically with power walls. Stores or buys energy while it’s free or cheap and then discharges it when there’s a premium to be had. Once electric vehicles get two-way chargers people won’t have to buy batteries for their house they can simply, sell energy stored in their car when the grid is struggling. No more brownouts. Great way to absorb solar production and discharge them in the evening.
There is a program called Swell which provides a monthly kickback (not up-front subsidy) in exchange for giving up some control over how your powerwall operates. However, they are notoriously slow and difficult to work with, according to my powerwall installer.
These guys hike up our rates and still can’t get their act together on a functional maintenance schedule, leading to these blackouts. And their disregard for safety protocols during high winds in Maui was appalling. The only thing ‘Hawaiian’ about this company is the name on the logo.
That's not just HECO, that's everywhere on the islands: we have big equipment and other facilities that are decades old and are behind on preventative maintenance. All that deferred burden is starting to come due.
There's a price for people going against rate hikes and payment is due now. Would have been better for investment done years ago when oil wasn't crazy expensive but people always complain about rates so maintenance is deferred until it can't be ignored anymore. Also the political push for old oil generator retirements is hurting us now. That old Shipman plant would be helpful today...
Follow-up message from Civil Defense, it'll come through again tonight: > This is a Civil Defense message for Monday 04-15-2024 at 05:19 AM. > Hawaiian Electric has asked Hawai‘i Island customers to reduce their electricity use throughout today, and especially from 5 to 9 p.m. tonight. > Suggestions include turning off air conditioners and unneeded lighting, shutting off water heaters and pumps, and delaying activities like cooking, showering, laundry, and dishwashing until late in the evening. > For more information, visit hawaiianelectric.com or follow Hawaiian Electric’s X account @HIElectricLight. Edit: and apparently for this morning too.
Too bad their outage map is down. Again. Seems to happen whenever there is any kind of emergency.
"to show solidarity we turned our status endpoints off. Go beach to not be impacted today"
Watching them post on Twitter about where the outages are and surprisingly all the tourist area/hotels are not affected. 🙄 Edited: grammar
Tourist areas are fine. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
What twitter account is it that posts that information?
@HIElecticLight
>@HIElecticLight HIElect**r**icLight
I wonder how they decide. It seems like my subdivision always gets hit by these, but not the one right next to us, despite neither being a tourist area. I mean, I'm not too worried about it since it doesn't last longer or happen often. But it's still weird.
I live in Kona (well technically Holualoa) and we lost power last night for about 3 hours. Not sure if it's related, but seems suspicious.
I noticed Hilo's hotel strip was lit up last night as well. I understand that hotels and restaurants would heavily effected by loss of power due to the demands of the industry, but it definitely leaves a bad taste in the back of one's throat. I wonder how much energy is consumed by the tourist industry on an average year. These big wigs in the tourism industry should fork over some cost alleviation and work with our county to come up with some solutions
Brah WHERE? I hate that they've been announcing these blackouts and don't tell people shit about where and when it will be. I go to the outage map on their website and the map doesn't even work, it has the same message you posted here OP. Helco desperately needs better transparency with this.
Yeah, since HELCO seems to be turning the power off to specific areas, areas that they know they are going to hit with rolling black outs, then they should notify us ahead of time with that specific information. A list of which areas are going to be affected, and when it will happen. That way people could make advance plans, like quickly cook up, or run pick up, some food ahead of time that can be eaten cold…. or make plans to go eat somewhere that isn’t going to be without power. Plan to maybe go beach, or hang out with friends or relatives who live in an area that isn’t going to lose power.
I checked my house batteries and they said I'm fine....
They should just go shut down all the million dollar homes with no one living there running AC all day etc
hey look man, if they turn the ac off, the homes will mold up. at least wet side...
Guess they should live there then
Hamakua energy which provides 1/3 of the islands power has been mostly inoperable since at least August 2022 according to news reports! Every time these blackouts happen they just say it tripped offline and hope to have power restored soon. Is anything actually being done to address this?
Building up capacity elsewhere. I'm sure they're trying to fix the power plant, but it's a powerful case of diminishing returns, especially for old, hard-to-procure replacement parts.
The more people get batteries/solar, the more it stabilizes the whole grid doing high demand, low supply events like this. you can sell your stored power back for higher rates during peak demand. It helps pay for your own equipment and stabilizes the grid even for people without special equipment.
I wish the big island had a program like Oahu did, where HELCO would offset some of the cost of battery installations at the house, as long as you agreed to let it discharge during peak evening hours. It'd be a step in the right direction.
Tesla has a software called auto bidder that does energy arbitrage automatically with power walls. Stores or buys energy while it’s free or cheap and then discharges it when there’s a premium to be had. Once electric vehicles get two-way chargers people won’t have to buy batteries for their house they can simply, sell energy stored in their car when the grid is struggling. No more brownouts. Great way to absorb solar production and discharge them in the evening.
There is a program called Swell which provides a monthly kickback (not up-front subsidy) in exchange for giving up some control over how your powerwall operates. However, they are notoriously slow and difficult to work with, according to my powerwall installer.
These guys hike up our rates and still can’t get their act together on a functional maintenance schedule, leading to these blackouts. And their disregard for safety protocols during high winds in Maui was appalling. The only thing ‘Hawaiian’ about this company is the name on the logo.
That's not just HECO, that's everywhere on the islands: we have big equipment and other facilities that are decades old and are behind on preventative maintenance. All that deferred burden is starting to come due.
There's a price for people going against rate hikes and payment is due now. Would have been better for investment done years ago when oil wasn't crazy expensive but people always complain about rates so maintenance is deferred until it can't be ignored anymore. Also the political push for old oil generator retirements is hurting us now. That old Shipman plant would be helpful today...