Hawaiian Electric Submits October Earthquake Outage Report To PUC

Honolulu, HI — Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) recently submitted to the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission (PUC) its report on the investigation of the October 15, 2006 island-wide earthquake outage and restoration on Oahu.

The investigation consultants, POWER Engineers, Inc. of Hailey, Idaho, concluded that, "HECO's performance prior to and during the outage demonstrated reasonable actions in the public interest" in a "distinctly extraordinary event." They also made a number of recommendations, mostly of a technical nature, regarding the operation of the electric system during such an incident.

In summarizing their conclusions and recommendations, POWER Engineers stated:

• The HECO system was in proper operating condition and appropriately staffed by personnel at the time that the earthquake struck. The unusually strong earthquake was the direct and proximate cause of the island-wide outage, setting in motion a series of events (through the operation of automatic relays and through operators' actions to protect the equipment) which resulted in loss of generation that eventually led to the system shutdown.

• In POWER's opinion, the HECO personnel reacted to the circumstances in a reasonable, responsible and professional manner. They applied training and experience in reacting properly to the changing system conditions based on the existing system configuration and established HECO operating practices to attempt to prevent the island-wide outage and to restore power as quickly as practical.

• In particular, after the complete shutdown of the system, a critical and prudent decision was made to simultaneously black start units at Kahe and Waiau power plants in parallel, which allowed the restoration to proceed as expeditiously as possible without the setbacks that would have resulted from delays that were in fact encountered at Kahe plant.

• In the restoration, HECO operated reasonably and in the public interest by following a systematic, orderly and methodical approach to add customer load to the system, allowing adequate time to inspect the system for earthquake damage, stabilize the operation of the generating units, and stabilize frequency and voltage on the grid.

HECO Senior Vice President of Operations Tom Joaquin stated, "We will move forward in considering all the recommendations of the POWER Engineers' experts. Some we have already begun to act on; others may need to await comments from the Public Utilities Commission and Consumer Advocate's inquiries.

"While the report provides a vote of confidence in our system plans and the performance of our employees, it also points out potential areas for improvement. We will seriously evaluate all of these recommendations. We learn from every major emergency response and we always want to do better."

POWER Engineers' specific recommendations include:

1. Review the necessity and design features of an automatic lockout feature on the hydraulic pumps for the Kahe 5 and Kahe 6 steam turbines, while still ensuring that other measures are in place to protect the pumps from potential damage. (The earthquake caused switches – see recommendation #2 – to give a false reading of low fluid levels, which triggered the protective mechanism to lock out the hydraulic pumps for the two largest HECO generating units, Kahe 5 and Kahe 6. This led to their shutdown and, ultimately, the island-wide outage.)

2. Investigate replacing the mercury-type level switches (the type installed by the manufacturer on the Kahe hydraulic pumps) with another type of switch less likely to give false indications under earthquake conditions.

3. Assess the safety, permitting, technical needs, costs and other issues related to possible changes in the electrical connections for the Kalaeloa Power Partners combustion turbine generating units to determine if these units could also be used to re-energize the 138 kV transmission system in case of an island-wide outage. At present, for safety reasons, the Kalaeloa units cannot directly energize a dead electric grid.

4. Undertake a study to update the low-frequency load shedding scheme, the system which turns off power to blocks of customers when the system frequency drops. Potential changes resulting from such a study should consider the balance of many factors including weighing the possibility of more frequent outages for some customers if more customers are dropped sooner versus better protection of generating units by reducing the time they may run at low frequencies.

5. Determine the lowest frequency at which HECO's steam turbines can reasonably operate at full load. This information might be used to change the low-frequency load shedding scheme discussed in recommendation #4 above.

6. As part of future planned maintenance, or when the units are not running, visually inspect the last row of low pressure turbine blades on several Waiau and Kahe generating units for signs of possible damage which may have occurred from operating at low frequencies.

7. Assess the system restoration process following an island-wide blackout to determine the best order for generation startup to be able to restore customers as quickly and safely as possible, while also stabilizing system frequency and voltage to prevent generator trips that would result in additional restoration delays.

8. Evaluate black start procedures and training, taking into account scenarios for possible equipment failures and communications needed when simultaneously black starting several units.

9. Assess the feasibility of providing additional data capture and storage capability on certain generating units, by means of new equipment or software, to provide greater documentation during an incident.

Also submitted to the PUC was an internally prepared HECO report with an evaluation and recommendations on external communications during the outage. The communications report noted that – in line with the experience of the public at large – "External communications to the media and other audiences were significantly hampered by technical challenges including congested phone networks, poor cell phone reception, and loss of cellular and most land line phone service to HECO's Ward Avenue facility during the afternoon." The report acknowledges that although company personnel worked diligently and responsibly to try to keep the media and public informed, there are a number of recommendations which could improve the company's ability to provide more timely and frequent communications in future emergencies.

These recommendations include:

1. a review of cell phone providers' back-up battery capabilities and possible addition of back-up cell phone services for key emergency response personnel;
2. installation of a dedicated hotline between HECO's emergency operations headquarters and the State Civil Defense emergency center;
3. installation of more back-up trunk lines to keep HECO's customer service call center accessible even if its main phone service provider should exhaust its battery power; investigation of backup communications capabilities into the emergency broadcast radio station (e.g., a dedicated phone line) and when appropriate, dispatch of a spokesperson to remain at the radio station during a major outage, and
4. revision of prepared messages to customers to better explain the power restoration process and duration.

Immediately following the October 15 outage, HECO committed to do a full investigation of the outage using the services of an outside industry expert firm. Subsequently, the Division of Consumer Advocacy asked the PUC to open a formal investigative docket. The PUC initiated the investigation on October 27, 2006. Under the PUC-approved schedule for the investigation, HECO's report on the Oahu outage is due on December 29, 2006. Reports from POWER Engineers regarding the outages on Maui and the Island of Hawaii are due by March 30, 2007. The formal investigative docket is expected to continue through the fall of 2007.

Copies of the executive summary of the POWER Engineers report as well as HECO's External Communications report will be posted on www.heco.com and full copies of the report will be available at the Hawaii State Library and at HECO's Richards Street and Ward Avenue customer service locations.

SOURCE: HECO