Comment by billyboy808

O'ahu just had rolling blackouts last week because 2/6 steam generators at the Waiau oil plant went down for less than a day. All it takes is one cloudy day and one system failure to cause rolling blackouts across the entire island. If the coal plant was still online, HECO could've avoided rolling blackouts. Some people were out for hours, much longer than the 30 minutes HECO indicated on their social media.

I think HECO keeping their entire fossil fuel portfolio around until they have enough batteries installed across the whole island would have been the smart play, but even with those batteries, one cloudy day is all it takes. We needed that 185MW instantaneous power on the grid ready to go for situations like last week. HECO's total fixed generation on O'ahu is 1600MW. I still fail to see how removing 1/7 of the island's total fixed generation is a smart move.

Given our remote location, you'd think HECO would keep the fossil fuel generation around for a few more years, but utility monopolies don't usually have the public's best interest in mind.