After an islandwide power outage that affected 65,000 customers Tuesday morning, Maui’s electrical grid went back online later in the day. The cause: a high-voltage short circuit at the Maalaea Power Plant caused generating units to trip, Hawaiian Electric, which electrifies all of Maui, said in a news release.
Hawaiian Electric restored power completely by
2 p.m., Shayna Decker, a spokesperson for the company, wrote in the news release.
The outage closed schools and disrupted government agencies.
Fourteen schools on Maui, from Lahaina to Haiku to Makawao, shut down because of the outage, a news release from the Hawaii Department of Education said.
All affected schools are scheduled to reopen today.
The Maui County Department of Water Supply asked residents to conserve water since its electrical pumps lost power, according to a news release from Brian Perry, a spokesperson for Maui County Mayor Michael Victorino. The Maui County Service Center lost phone and internet service, according to the news release. The Division of Motor Vehicles and Licensing could not service customers.
Maui Police Department officers conducted traffic where stoplights lost power, Victorino said in the news release.
“This is a highly unusual event — the last outage to affect a large number of Maui customers occurred after a lightning storm in 2017 — and the company is looking into the case of the short circuit,” Decker wrote.
A generator at the power plant tripped Jan. 20, cutting power to about 7,200 customers for less than an hour, multiple Opens in a new tab outlets Opens in a new tab reported Opens in a new tab at the time. Built in 1971, the Maalaea Power Plant houses 21 of the county’s 46 power generation units and can power 80% of the island’s energy demand, the Maui News reported Opens in a new tab.
