Wind Farm Outage Cuts Power to Thousands

One of the island’s two major wind farms tripped off-line briefly today, cutting off electricity for a wide swath of Hawai`i Electric Light Co. customers.

The Pakini Nui Wind Farm operated by Apollo Energy Corp. near South Point lost power at 1:29 p.m., HELCO spokesman Roger Keller said. The wind farm, which according to the utility provides approximately 9 megawatts of power, was able to go back onto the grid after a few minutes.

Approximately 11,566 customers located in Kona, Waimea, Hamakua and Hilo were affected by the outage.

Additional generation units were started and all customers had power restored within about three minutes, Keller said.