HECO calls off possible power cutoff |
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Fri, 02 Feb 2007 21:25
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HONOLULU (AFX) - With an assist from Mother Nature, Hawaiian Electric Co. called off rolling blackouts that could have affected about 50,000 customers Thursday night.'We were able to ride through the height of the peak demand period tonight as cooler weather helped bring down demand,' said Lynne Unemori, HECO vice president of corporate relations.Finding itself running short on supply, Hawaiian Electric Co. had warned its Oahu customers Thursday night that it might be forced to turn off power to selected areas of the island.The action had been considered to protect the electrical system and to avoid an unplanned loss of power to an even greater number of its 292,000 customers, HECO said. It had asked customers to conserve electricity.The areas that would have been affected by selected outages were parts of Windward Oahu, North Central Oahu and East Oahu. No hospitals would have been affected.HECO said three of its generating units were off-line for planned maintenance and one of its independent power producers, AES, had a problem that caused it to operate at lower than normal capacity. However, AES was able to resume full capacity Thursday evening.Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. is the holding company for HECO.In addition, the Kahe Power Plant run at lower than normal capacity because of an unusual inundation of sea grass seeping through seawater intake filters, HECO said. The sea grass clogged screens and hampered the units' cooling systems, it said.Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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