On August 24, 2026, parts of Portlock Road and the Maunalua Triangle lost power for hours. There was no storm. Board member Altonn told the next evening's Hawaiʻi Kai Neighborhood Board meeting about it. She said her district was "hitting its limit" with recurring outages lasting 45 to 48 hours, and she asked for someone with enough standing to press Hawaiian Electric for change before a catastrophic event.
Most coverage of East Honolulu outages describes one cause. Trees fall on the high-voltage lines that cross the Koʻolau, and the whole region goes dark. That is real. Hawaiian Electric's own explanation for Portlock points to a second, more local cause, though. Most of the fixes discussed at September's town hall are aimed at the first problem. The second one has no published plan yet.
Two ways the power fails
Hawaiian Electric's standard explanation starts with geography. As Honolulu Civil Beat reported on September 30, 2026, Oʻahu's grid relies on a backbone of transmission lines that cross the steep, heavily forested Koʻolau range again and again. Miles of those lines are exposed to falling trees and limbs, which can set off chain reactions of outages. The same report says areas like Hawaiʻi Kai have an extra problem: aging underground distribution lines that are vulnerable to water damage.
The neighborhood board record adds a Portlock-specific detail. In July 2026, City Council Chair Tommy Waters reported on a meeting with Hawaiian Electric about recurring outages and flickering lights in Hāhaʻione Valley and Portlock. According to his report, the utility blamed deteriorating insulation on underground lines that lack protective conduits.
That helps explain the pattern East Honolulu residents described to Civil Beat. A transmission failure tends to take down a large area all at once. A bad stretch of underground cable can leave one pocket dark while the next street keeps its lights. In the same article, a resident described seeing the lights on across Hawaiʻi Kai Marina while his own home was dark.
| Koʻolau transmission lines | Neighborhood underground cable | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it hits | East Honolulu broadly | Specific pockets, including Portlock and Hāhaʻione Valley per the July 2026 report |
| Cause as described by HECO | Trees and limbs falling on lines over forested ridges | Deteriorating insulation on lines without protective conduits |
| Work described as under way | More tree trimming, replacing aging equipment, scheduling helicopter pole replacements | None published |
| Options discussed | Hardening lines over the Koʻolau, a new connection to generation from town | Running distribution lines on poles along Kalanianaʻole Highway |
The cable under the street
The cable problem has deep roots. Civil Beat reported that Hawaiian Electric traces part of East Honolulu's vulnerability to a grid whose foundation was laid in the 1940s. That was before Henry J. Kaiser began developing Hawaiʻi Kai around Kuapā Pond in the 1960s, under a lease with Kamehameha Schools. Jim Kelly, the utility's vice president for government and community relations and corporate communications, put it this way: "If we were designing this today, we would not design it this way."
Local officials are tracking it. At the same July meeting where Waters gave his report, Rep. Joe Gedeon's office said it was coordinating with Hawaiian Electric on underground line deterioration tied to nearby excavation work. The minutes don't name a cable, a contractor, or work dates. A review of Hawaiian Electric releases, Public Utilities Commission pages, and local coverage through October 12, 2026 turned up no East Honolulu cable or conduit replacement contract, no named circuit, and no completion timeline.
A broader undergrounding concept does exist on paper. Hawaiian Electric's 2022 resilience application proposed moving four circuit-miles of Oʻahu distribution lines underground, prioritizing lines with vegetation-related failures. That application didn't identify Hawaiʻi Kai as a selected location. It addresses overhead lines that trees can hit. Underground cable that is already buried and deteriorating is a different problem.
What the Niu Valley town hall put on the table
Nearly 200 residents attended a community meeting at Niu Valley Middle School hosted by Sen. Stanley Chang, Rep. Mark Hashem and Council Chair Waters, according to Civil Beat. KHON2's coverage of the September 23 meeting lists what the utility said it is already doing: more tree trimming and replacing aging equipment. Shari Ishikawa, Hawaiian Electric's vice president of energy delivery, told the crowd that some poles needed to be replaced by helicopter. "We've been working over the last couple of months to schedule that helicopter work," she said, adding that the company would probably issue a bulletin so residents would know why they hear helicopters. As of October 12, no such bulletin had been located.
The longer-term ideas discussed, hardening the lines over the Koʻolau and adding a new connection to generation from town, both target the transmission side. One option does address the cable problem directly. Kelly said that running distribution lines on poles along Kalanianaʻole Highway, instead of underground, could avoid the aging conduits. He also mentioned possible cost increases and asked how many people would want to see power lines above the highway. Hawaiian Electric senior vice president and chief operating officer Jim Alberts described what happens when the company proposes a plan and community meetings oppose it. None of these options has been reported as approved.
Several days after the meeting, Kelly told Civil Beat that Hawaiian Electric is establishing an advisory group of East Honolulu residents to "make the connection between what we're working on internally and what the community wants to know about and weigh in on." No membership list, meeting date or public schedule had appeared by mid-October. If Portlock's cable issue gets a hearing, this group is one likely place for it.
How the outage counts compare
Civil Beat cited PowerOutage.us data for the two weeks before its September 30 story. In that window, 146 outages were reported within a one-mile radius of Hawaiʻi Kai Shopping Center, adding up to 58,232 customer-impacts. The same radius around Civil Beat's Kaimukī office saw 60 outages and 379 customer-impacts. The outage count is less than three times Kaimukī's. The customer-impacts are more than 150 times higher.
Rep. Gedeon's office ran a Utility Reliability Survey. His priorities page reports more than 600 responses: 93% rated Hawaiian Electric's reliability poor or fair, 87% reported at least three significant outages, and 92% supported escalating to the PUC or the Legislature if things don't improve. At the August board meeting, his office said the survey had drawn about 425 responses in its first 24 hours.
Sen. Chang said that East Honolulu's grid "went from one of the best to one of the worst in the state in just a few years" and that true solutions would take years to complete. He also said he would support the utility's tree-cutting work in the Legislature.
The paper trail behind each outage
Hawaiian Electric prepares a detailed root-cause analysis for every outage, according to Civil Beat. When the outlet asked for the last 10 analyses for East Honolulu, the company didn't provide them and wouldn't say whether it ever would. As a private company, the utility isn't subject to open-records laws. The Public Utilities Commission, which regulates it, can require that information.
The watchdog group Life of the Land, led by executive director Henry Curtis, is asking the commission to require more outage detail as part of Hawaiian Electric's ongoing grid planning. The state's Office of Consumer Advocacy supports the request. The PUC's current grid planning proceeding is Docket 2026-0001, opened January 2, 2026. Coverage so far doesn't say whether the outage-detail request was filed there. No PUC action on the request had been reported by October 12. For Portlock, outage-level records like these would show how often the problem is local cable and how often it's the Koʻolau lines.
Hawaiian Electric also has a rate request before the commission. Civil Beat reported it would add about $11 to the average Oʻahu residential bill by 2028.
Keeping track from the Triangle
Until any of this is settled, these are the official channels and local groups tied to outages and preparedness in Hawaiʻi Kai:
- Oʻahu Outage Map shows known outages. Hawaiian Electric notes that customer counts and restoration estimates are approximate and may update slowly when several outages are happening at once.
- Report an outage online, or call the Oʻahu trouble line at 1-855-304-1212.
- Hawaiian Electric's mobile app shows outage status, lets you report outages and view the outage map, and sends notifications you can set for storms and planned outages.
- Emergency Outage Communications Form lets you list phone and email contacts for public safety power shutoffs and other situations that may cause an outage.
- Hawaiʻi Kai Strong is the neighborhood's disaster-readiness coalition, led by Matt Glei. At the August meeting, the board chair pointed the Maunalua Triangle/Koko Kai Community Association toward the group for wildfire mitigation.
- CERT training from Honolulu's Department of Emergency Management prepares graduates to join an existing community team or start a new one.
The Hawaiʻi Kai Neighborhood Board's next regular meeting is Tuesday, November 24, 2026.
Infrastructure questions like this come up when Portlock homeowners plan a renovation or think about their next move, and they're easier to work through with someone who follows the neighborhood board record. If you'd like to talk about how utility reliability and other local details fit into your plans for a Koko Kai or Portlock home, Mavis Nellas is glad to help. Schedule a Free Consultation.
