Yeah Tom, we’re stumped, too.
In case you were wondering, that little power outage the other day in Kihei–the one that cut power to 13,000 South Maui customers for not quite an hour on Wednesday afternoon–was due to “An inadvertently closed switch at a substation,” according to a blurb in today’s Maui News.
According to the story, “[a]n investigation of the power blackout determined that, during testing of substation equipment at MECO‘s Kealahou substation, a switch was left closed that resulted in an ‘automatic relay scheme’ that opened all circuits that provide power to Kihei and Wailea, [MECO spokeswoman Kau'i Awai-Dickson] said. And that brought about the power outage.”
Also–again, just in case you were curious–the phrase “improve service reliability” played a huge part in the justification MECO used to convince the state Public Utilities Commission to grant its requested 3.2 percent interim rate hike (which went into effect on June 1 of this year).
Hey, I’m just saying.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Tags: MECO, power outage, PUC, rate hike, South Maui, Thomas Edison
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