Answers on Blackout Prompt More Questions; Citizens Will Have Their Chance on Monday

Hawaiian Electric Company’s briefing yesterday to the Public Utilities Commission was a welcome look behind the scenes of a utility that usually does its public service job out of sight and out of mind.

HECO employees are committed to providing what arguably is society’s most important product, around the clock and throughout the year. That commitment becomes part of the DNA of long-time employees, and it’s completely understandable why protecting the company’s generators was of paramount importance to them on Sunday – and on every day, for that matter.

The company’s collective actions saved the generators, and all were cranking again hours after the earthquake. That said, more questions are suggested by newspaper accounts of yesterday’s briefing.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported today that a HECO official said the only thing the company would have done differently during the power crisis was improve its communication with the media and the public.

The CHORE blog is about giving voice to Citizens who want to Help Officials Respond to Emergencies. With respect to HECO officials, what we’re hearing is that citizens would like to know what might have been done differently to keep their power on.

Citizens are saying in the newspapers’ letters pages, on talk shows and on blogs that improved communications during outages, while absolutely necessary, pales in comparison to improving system operations that might prevent outages in the first place.

Load Shedding Still a Question

Only the Honolulu Advertiser’s story today mentions load shedding, an emergency process we’ve written about this week, so either the Bulletin missed it or load shedding wasn’t a prominent topic at yesterday’s PUC hearing. And the Advertiser’s report mentions load shedding pretty much in passing. Here’s a quote from that story:

“As generators were going down, HECO automatically cut power to some customers to balance the system, a process known as load shedding. If they can cut off customers fast enough, they can keep the active generators from taking on too much stress and shutting down.”

An obvious question: Can HECO’s computerized load shedding protocol be improved to shed greater numbers of customers to stabilize the system quicker than what happened on Sunday, thereby preventing a total shutdown? HECO’s own timeline, if reported accurately in the Advertiser, suggests that more than 150,000 customers still had power at 7:27 a.m. when another generator shut off, “resulting in an Islandwide blackout”.

We need more detail about that last phrase. Why did the loss of that generator result in the blackout, when the earlier loss of other generators prompted incremental load shedding. Could a different computerized scheme have saved the system? The Advertiser raises the issue in its lead editorial today.

Without more information, it’s hard to accept that the total shutdown was inevitable and unavoidable and that the only corrective action HECO now identifies is improving its communication to the media.

Most of this won’t be sorted out with any finality until HECO’s newly hired consultant Power Engineers produces a report months from now. Let’s make a collective mental note to see what’s in the report about load shedding.

First HECO, Now Civil Defense?

Hawaiian Electric is stepping up to the plate (in a World Series week) to hold a question-and-answer session for the public at 2 p.m. Monday in the State Capitol.

Unless I’ve missed it, no similar briefing is scheduled by State officials to explain to the public why the Emergency Alert System didn’t kick in early in the crisis; why it wasn’t important to announce that no tsunami was generated and whether they’ve changed their ideas about that; what the State intends to do to encourage broadcasters to improve their ability to stay on the air and operate throughout a crisis in the public interest, etc.

Despite all the attention given by CHORE today to HECO, it’s really the State’s emergency communications system that seems to have generated the most citizen interest. Citizens, you have great ideas and questions, so don’t be shy. Click on “comments” and post them here at CHORE.

Update: City Seeks Quicker Alerts

From the Advertiser in mid-morning:

Mayor Mufi Hannemann this morning announced plans to get more accurate information out to the public quickly in the event of an emergency like Sunday's earthquakes and power outage.

The city's Traffic Management Center has the ability to communicate directly with TV and radio stations and in the future will use that technology to get information directly to the media when that is the most effective option.

The city is also trying to get permission from the state to be able to access the Emergency Alert System on its own authority, instead of having to follow state protocol.

Meanwhile, the city's information technology experts will be looking into ways to get information out over the Internet.

Good move, Mr. Mayor. Your move, State Civil Defense.