4 P.M. UPDATE: Repair crews making progress, aim to restore power to downtown Honolulu by early evening

4 P.M. UPDATE: Repair crews making progress, aim to restore power to downtown Honolulu by early evening

Release Date: 6/13/2024

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HONOLULU, June 13, 2024 - Hawaiian Electric crews continue to make progress on restoring electric service to customers in the downtown Honolulu area who lost power shortly after 10 a.m. Crews anticipate completing repairs and restoring power by early evening.

"We apologize for the disruption caused by this outage and we know this is especially challenging for businesses and government offices. Our crews are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power and get everyone back up by early evening," said Darren Pai, Hawaiian Electric spokesperson.

The incident resulted from a sequence of events that started at approximately 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, when an outage affected the area between Bishop and Mililani streets downtown. That outage damaged an underground cable that feeds power into the downtown area.

Subsequently, shortly after 10 a.m. Thursday, equipment at the Iwilei substation experienced an overload of power. This caused the broader outage, which covers the area from Chinatown to the Capitol District and includes office buildings, condominiums and key government buildings including the State Capitol, the federal building and post office and state court buildings. The outage affects about 900 customer accounts, but many of those are master-metered office buildings and condominiums that have hundreds of tenants. Traffic signals downtown are also affected.

Most of the downtown Honolulu area is served by underground cables that run below the streets. This underground network was originally built in the 1960s and 1970s. While sections have been updated and maintained over the decades, much of the original cable remains in service.